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Whore of Babylon
- Thread starter caritas
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Thank you!im so jealous! Have a great holiday
I had a great time.So does every other Protestant group out there. It seems you all have radically different ideas about what teachings the Bible is actually a basis for...
Though I do have to hand it to you guys. I randomly decided to take a Watchtower magazine on my way to the airport in Edinburgh that was being offered by a Jehovah's Witness, and it did try to give everything possible a Biblical citation and base entire articles on Biblical passages.
On the contrary, among the Fathers there is a clear consensus of what the Tradition of the Apostles is, and what the Faith of the Apostles is. The Apostles appointed successors who knew very well the Apostolic Tradition and kept it faithfully, and these successors in turn appointed other faithful successors. It wasn't the Bible that was the basis of the early Church, since the Bible as we know it didn't even exist for over three hundred years after Christ. Imagine that! All the early Christian communities, from Germania to Gaul to Spain to Syria to Egypt to Palestine to Rome to Antioch to Alexandria, all of these teaching the same thing without having the same Bible to preach from! How do you suppose they did it without the Bible?
Except, you have one teacher that everyone knows is deviating from the tradition of the Apostles that was spoken to the Church (1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, 2 Thessalonians 3:6, Hebrews 13:7), because what he teaches is different from what every other presbyter, episkopos and diakonos is teaching. Back in those days, people didn't trust the written word; they trusted lineages of teachers. They know who their teachers were and who taught their teachers, and they could cross-reference and see if what their teachers were telling them is what the teachers themselves were taught. The very fact that the Gnostic writings were rejected from the Biblical canon proves that the Church didn't just rely on writings; they also relied very heavily on the traditions that were passed down from the Apostles to the hierarchs and leaders of the churches--the bishops (episkopoi,) priests (again, shortened form of presbyteroi) and deacons.
Reading anything necessarily involves interpreting it. There's no such thing as reading something and not interpreting it; everything we read is filtered through our own lens and perspective.
Actually, it has. You know John 8, the story of the adulterous woman? That story did not exist in the earliest manuscripts of John 8. It was added in by a scribe who wanted to preserve an oral tradition--and that's all the Gospels are, oral traditions that people wanted to preserve in writing.
You can read more about the later insertion of the story of the adulterous woman into John's Gospel here.
Man's understanding has evolved as God has given us more and more revelation.
Sheol being simply the grave is the original understanding. Later parts of the Bible have a more complete view, showing Hades to be a dwelling-place of the dead, who are somehow still conscious and existing as shades, yet despondent. The fuller revelation of the nature of Sheol went hand-in-hand with the fuller revelation of the nature of man's soul; as the Israelites learned more about what the soul actually was, they began to understand more the nature of what happens after death.
Yet, don't forget that some parts of Biblical books were written at different points in time than other parts. Many books of the Bible were literally pieced together over hundreds of years; the Book of Isaiah is one such example.
In Job 7, we see a statement that effectively denies the resurrection of the dead:
“Remember that my life is a breath;
my eye will never again see good.
8 The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more;
while your eyes are on me, I shall be gone.
9 As the cloud fades and vanishes,
so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up;
10 he returns no more to his house,
nor does his place know him anymore.
And again in Job 10:
18 “Why did you bring me out from the womb?
Would that I had died before any eye had seen me
19 and were as though I had not been,
carried from the womb to the grave.
20 Are not my days few?
Then cease, and leave me alone, that I may find a little cheer
21 before I go—and I shall not return—
to the land of darkness and deep shadow,
22 the land of gloom like thick darkness,
like deep shadow without any order,
where light is as thick darkness.”
And in Isaiah 38, we see the same idea:
10 I said, In the middle[d] of my days
I must depart;
I am consigned to the gates of Sheol
for the rest of my years.
11 I said, I shall not see the Lord,
the Lord in the land of the living;
I shall look on man no more
among the inhabitants of the world.
...
18 For Sheol does not thank you;
death does not praise you;
those who go down to the pit do not hope
for your faithfulness.
And to top that all off in 2 Samuel 14:14 we see this statement: 14 We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God will not take away life, and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast.
IOW, whoever dies cannot hope for God's mercy to bring them back from the dead. Sheol was eternal. There was no coming back from it. This was the original belief among the Hebrews and the Israelites. Only later did the belief in the resurrection of the dead develop, as God gave more revelation to the people of Israel.
No, that's henotheism--i.e. expressing that there's only one God Who should be worshipped. Monotheism is the assertion that only one God exists. At the beginning, all God could expect of the Israelites was for them to be henotheists. David calling God the "God of gods" shows clearly that the Israelites believed that Baal, Asherah, Molech, etc. were in fact real, living gods--they just believed that YHWH was greater than the rest of these other gods. Only later in the Book of Isaiah chapters 44-45 do we see proper monotheism being finally revealed by God to the Israelites. God progressively revealed more and more of the Truth to His people; He knew they wouldn't embrace full monotheism on the outset, so He had to wait for several centuries before the Israelites had matured and experienced enough for them to be able to understand the reality of monotheism.
The key is putting the Bible in its proper context--the teaching of the Apostles, of which the Bible is only a small part.
Yes, and the Hebrews had incomplete and vague understandings about the nature of death and the soul, which God later completed through more revelation. The notions that our soul is simply a life force, or that we cease to exist at death and that Hades/Sheol is just a euphemism for the grave, are notions borne out of incomplete information, but it was the information which the Israelites had available at the time.
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Dear Shira,
I don't think history quite backs your position. Sabinius, Bishop of Hereclea, disagreed with your assessment:
Thus, the first ecclesiastical gathering in history was summoned and is today known as the Council of Nicaea. It was a bizarre event that provided many details of early clerical thinking and presents a clear picture of the intellectual climate prevailing at the time. It was at this gathering that Christianity was born, and the ramifications of decisions made at the time are difficult to calculate. About four years prior to chairing the Council, Constantine had been initiated into the religious order of Sol Invictus, one of the two thriving cults that regarded the Sun as the one and only Supreme God (the other was Mithraism). Because of his Sun worship, he instructed Eusebius to convene the first of three sittings on the summer solstice, 21 June 325 (Catholic Encyclopedia, New Edition, vol. i, p. 792), and it was "held in a hall in Osius's palace" (Ecclesiastical History, Bishop Louis Dupin, Paris, 1686, vol. i, p. 598). In an account of the proceedings of the conclave of presbyters gathered at Nicaea, Sabinius, Bishop of Hereclea, who was in attendance, said, "Excepting Constantine himself and Eusebius Pamphilius, they were a set of illiterate, simple creatures who understood nothing" (Secrets of the Christian Fathers, Bishop J. W. Sergerus, 1685, 1897 reprint).
Constantine saw in this confused system of fragmented dogmas the opportunity to create a new and combined State religion, neutral in concept, and to protect it by law. When he conquered the East in 324 he sent his Spanish religious adviser, Osius of Córdoba, to Alexandria with letters to several bishops exhorting them to make peace among themselves. The mission failed and Constantine, probably at the suggestion of Osius, then issued a decree commanding all presbyters and their subordinates "be mounted on *****, mules and horses belonging to the public, and travel to the city of Nicaea" in the Roman province of Bithynia in Asia Minor. They were instructed to bring with them the testimonies they orated to the rabble, "bound in leather" for protection during the long journey, and surrender them to Constantine upon arrival in Nicaea (The Catholic Dictionary, Addis and Arnold, 1917, "Council of Nicaea" entry). Their writings totalled "in all, two thousand two hundred and thirty-one scrolls and legendary tales of gods and saviours, together with a record of the doctrines orated by them" (Life of Constantine, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 73; N&PNF, op. cit., vol. i, p. 518). Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 14, Number 4 (June - July 2007)
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Oh, you mean the heretic who lived long after Nicaea was convoked, and was a known liar about history, whose description of events disagrees strongly with everyone else?
Provide the link for this, please. If it's the Catholic Encyclopedia, it exists completely in an online format, and you should be able to provide the source and article. As it is, I can't find it. Until then, I have to abstain from treating this citation as credible.
It appears this work cannot be found online. If you could, provide the entire context of this quote, or better yet, scan the relevant section and post the image in this thread so we can verify the accuracy of the use of this citation.
Sabinus was both a partisan and a distorter of the truth.
From just looking up a Wikipedia article:
Sabinus of Heraclea was bishop of Heraclea in Thrace, and a leader of the party and sect of Macedonius[disambiguation needed]. He was the author of a collection of the Acts of the councils of the Catholic Church, from the council of Nicaea to his own time. William Cave[1] fixes the date at which Sabinus flourished as c. 425.
The church history of Sabinus was much used by Socrates of Constantinople in his Ecclesiastical History, who speaks of it as untrustworthy, because Sabinus was partisan, and omitted, and even wilfully altered, facts and statements adverse to his views and interests.[2] Socrates shews how Sabinus tries to disparage the fathers of Nicaea in the face of the contrary evidence of Eusebius, and makes no mention whatever of Macedonius, lest he should have to describe his deeds.
Baronius[3] speaks strongly of Sabinus's unscrupulous handling of history, calls him "homo mendacissimus," and suggests that Sozomen gives a garbled account of the election of Athanasius, "ex officina Sabini."
Nowhere anywhere on the Internet can I find information either about this author, or about this supposed work of his. No biography about the author, no information about who he was, no information about any of his works. I cannot trust this as a credible source, especially if it flies in the face of all the credible history I've read on the matter--from firsthand accounts and from accredited historians of Christian history. There is neither information about the author nor about his work that I can find anywhere. Not even a complete name.
Wrong on multiple counts. Osius was not Constantine's religious advisor, it was rather the Arian Eusebius of Nicomedia who was Constantine's confidant and religious advisor. Moreover, Osius wrote letters to Alexander of Alexandria (an orthodox bishop) and Arius (the heretical deacon).
I personally looked up the contents of this article, and it says absolutely nothing of the sort whatsoever. Whoever made the copypasta you're quoting has completely made something up and slapped the name of The Catholic Dictionary on it. I can cite what the work actually says, if you'd like.
I checked Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (which is completely available online), and I didn't find this quotation in either of the pages cited. It seems like Nexus Magazine got their stuff wrong.
If you could, please clean up your citations, and provide authentic quotes and works which can be verified. As it is, what you found was a pile of forgery and questionable citations.
History still seems to be on my side. Very questionable sources seem to be on yours.
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Keep in mind that the two examples you gave were from the medieval Catholic Church, which even Catholics will gladly tell you was deeply messed up, and are thus not ascribable to the Holy Orthodox Church.
St. Joan of Arc herself wasn't a heretic; she was executed by the English in a political move that the Pope strongly condemned. She was executed without the approval of Rome, but rather in accordance with the political whims of the English Church.
Galileo himself was also no heretic, and it was certainly a mistake to put his books on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books.
I never said that there were never heretics in the Church and those who deviated from the faith of the Apostles; there were and are, and the Arians are one of those who deviated from the Apostolic Faith, preferring to follow their own reasoning. But the ruling at Nicaea was rather unanimous; 22 bishops at the start were sympathetic to Arius, yet all abandoned him when they found out what he was actually teaching--that is, denying the divinity of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ.
Is there anything in this link in particular that you want me to have a look at?
Actually, it was not Theodosius who decreed the Trinity. Rather, it was the bishops of the Church, as successors of the Apostles, who defended the Apostolic Faith in the Triune God. Theodosius convened the Council, yes. But it was the bishops who declared the Faith, not the emperor. The emperors simply enforced whatever ruling a council gave, whether that council was Orthodox or heretical; this can be seen in the enforcement of Arian, Semi-Arian, Monophysite and Monothelite councils that were later shown to be out of line with the Faith and Tradition of the Church as given to us by the Apostles.
You keep insisting this, and every time I have reminded you that the Mosaic Law had been made non-compulsory for Gentile Christians as early as Acts 15. And we have testimony from Christians living in the first and second centuries that they worshipped and celebrated the Eucharist on Sunday.
If you can provide evidence that the early Christians did not worship on Sunday prior to Constantine's law, then you might have a case. As it is, all the first-hand testimony from Christians themselves living in the earliest decades and centuries of the Church points to Christians worshipping consistently on Sunday centuries before Constantine.
What do you mean? The Church has always taught that there is only one God. And, as I said, it was not the emperor who decided anything in the life of the Church.
No, the Church is still homogeneous. All the other denominations have simply left the Church. Any Christian who abandons the Faith of the Apostles is no longer a part of the Church. The Church never has been and never will be divided; she is the seamless garment of Christ. All those other thousands of denominations can lay claim to the name of Christian, but they in no way can rightly consider themselves a part of the Church if they don't have the Apostolic Faith. It may seem judgemental, it may sound unfair and uncharitable, but no Christian can claim to be part of the Church founded by Christ if they don't hold to the Tradition of the Apostles. The notion of an "invisible church" did not exist in the early Church; the Church is one visible unity that shares one faith, one baptism, one Lord of all, not this invisible umbrella extending over various denominations with contradictory teachings.
If you were to research the Second World War, would you not read the journals of soldiers to better understand what was going on at the time? If you wanted to get to know someone, would you not talk to them directly? Would you reject as worthless, unreliable and self-aggrandizing the testimony of a soldier about the war in which he fought? Would you decline to talk to a person directly in order to learn more about them, for fear that they may aggrandize themselves?
The idea that we should learn about the early Church without reading anything written by the Christians of those day is very bizarre; if you won't get it straight from the horse's mouth, you'll never understand the inner life of the Church. You'll just be stuck with the cover of the book, and not the pages on the inside.
And as you yourself said, Constantine ended up changing his mind several times and supporting Arius. No emperor has made the Faith of the Church what it is; they have simply enforced the decrees of the councils the only way an emperor knew how.
Again, I never disputed the fact that many in the Church have been swept away by heresy. But the Apostolic Faith has always won out in the end against heresy; the unchanging teaching of the Orthodox Church proves that much. And yes, caesaropapism was (and still is for some Orthodox churches *cough*Russia*cough*) a problem.
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Triumphant_Loser
Libertarian Egalitarian
Although I am not a religious person, and the Bible is just about as binding to me as "Harry Potter" or the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, I still must point out that the Vatican itself sits on a hill, so that makes it 8 hills, not the biblical 7.
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Dear loser,
Rev 17:9," Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits, and they are seven kings; five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he comes, he must remain a little while. and the beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is one of the seven, and he goes to destruction."
These are the heads of the beast on which the woman sits:
Five have fallen at the time of the writing of the book of REVELATIONS
1.Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (conquered Jerusalem)
2. Cyrus the Great of Persia (helped rebuild Jerusalem)
3. Alexander the Great of Macedonia (his general Antiochus III ruled over the area inclusive of Jerusalem,Antiochus IV Epiphenes built altar to Zeus in 2nd Temple and outlawed the Sabbath, and Circumcision in 175 BCE)
4. Triumvirate (Caesar, Pompey, & Crassus) Pompey the Great of Rome (conquered Jerusalem) Pompey desecrated the Temple site by dedicating it to Zeus.
5. Julius Caesar (will lay siege to Jerusalem on his return as the 8th beast)
One that is
6. Augustus Caesar (Octavius, nephew of Julius Caesar was the first) includes following emperors of Rome who were also called Augustus Caesar, for Augustus was a title meaning venerable (consecrated one), given to the Roman emperors by the Senate. Caesar was deified by the Roman Senate after his death (15 March 44 BC) and subsequently venerated as "the Divine Julius". The word "Saviour" was affixed to his name, its literal meaning being "one who sows the seed", i.e., he was a phallic god. Julius Caesar was hailed as "God made manifest and universal Saviour of human life", and his successor Augustus was called the "ancestral God and Saviour of the whole human race" The Augustus title is also linked to Augury, which is a Roman form of prophecy. Augustus Caesar was given the position of the Ponifex Maximus, which is high priest of the gods and calendar. The Greek translation for "anointed one" is Christ Augustus Caesar is a name adopted by the Roman emperors in honor of Caesar. The 10th Augustus Caesar, Titus, destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. while he was a general under Vespasian) Titus made sacrifice to Roman standard on site of Temple.
Other has not come;
7. Constantine the Great King of Rome (overwhelmed Jerusalem with influx of Christians) Constantine changed the Law (multiple gods) and the Times (day of rest).
One that was, is not, yet to come
8. Caesar (Czar, Kaiser), Hitler who assumed dictatorship from the Weimar Republic, similar to what Caesar did to Romes Republic, and instituted the 3rd Reich (Holy Roman Empire) There would be 10 kings, but only those affiliated with persecution of Judah (jews), the harlot of Rev 17:16, would be included in the last 10 horns. They would have to be similar in make up to a mix of iron and clay, so most probably a mix of former 5 Roman empire states with 5 Arab states.(Dan 2) An example being Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Russian plus 5 Arab states, Edom (Egypt), Moab (Jordan ), Ammon (Syria), Philistines (Lebanon), and Babylon (Iraq) (Ez 24-25) These are the 5 countries which invaded Israel in 1948. Britain was thrown out of Israel in 1948, and Jordan, Egypt, Syria with Russian allies, were thrown partially out of Israel in 1967. The fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem have to yet be fully restored Joel 3:2.
I'm having trouble understanding what you mean by "Roman Church"... Do you mean the Church at Rome, headed by the Bishop of Rome? Because the various Eastern Churches at Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Persia, India and elsewhere were never and are still not part of the Roman Church... The early Church as a whole wasn't Roman. The Roman Church was in Italy, North Africa (minus Egypt of course) and nowhere else. Elsewhere, you had the Eastern Churches, and even other Western Churches (Irish, Spanish, British, Frankish, Gothic, etc.) Western Christendom wouldn't be united under Rome until the Carolingian Empire in the 800's.
I'll agree that the Roman Church is messed up, but every denomination on earth is made up of sinners.
Lord have mercy. That bishop should be deposed if he allowed it.
Really? I've read all extant documents about the First Council of Constantinople, and nowhere do I see them speaking ill of the Council of Nicaea. Rather, Nicaea was re-affirmed and its decrees were expanded. Do you have any quotes to the contrary?
Yes, and we Orthodox hold to that.
Wait, what? I've read the Second Council of Nicaea (which was convened in the year 787 to combat the heresy of iconoclasm, BTW) and they don't say anything of the sort about the First Council of Nicaea held in 325. Rather, they re-affirm its decrees as being truly Orthodox and to be held by all. For example, this is one of many references to the previous Six Ecumenical Councils, mentioning the First Council of Nicaea specifically:
"Our holy synod therefore assembled, and we, its 338 members, follow the older synodal decrees, and accept and proclaim joyfully the dogmas handed down, principally those of the six holy Ecumenical Synods. In the first place the holy and ecumenical great synod assembled at Nice. . ." -Source The Nicene Creed and the decrees of the Council of Nicaea are recited numerous times throughout the Second Council of Nicaea.
That's two things Nexus Magazine has completely invented. Don't trust that source; it's shoddy.
The only daughters the Roman Church has are the Protestants... Antioch, Alexandria, Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia, Smyrna and Jerusalem are all Rome's elder sisters, as they predate the Church at Rome.
And no, the term "Roman Church" comes from the local church in Italy that had its headquarters in Rome. Calling the various Eastern Churches "Roman" is a misnomer and indicates a grave lack of knowledge about Christian history, unless we are distinguishing between the city of Rome, and the Eastern Roman Empire.
Now I know you've never read any of the primary documents from the early Church. Idolatry has always been forbidden in the Church. Icons are used in the Orthodox Church to emphasize the reality of Christ's Incarnation, and also to show a transformed and glorified state of creation as it will be after the Last Judgement, where God's light shines in and through all things.
From the original documents published by the Second Council of Nicaea:
Christ our Lord, who hath bestowed upon us the light of the knowledge of himself, and hath redeemed us from the darkness of idolatrous madness, having espoused to himself the Holy Catholic Church without spot or defect, promised that he would so preserve her: and gave his word to this effect to his holy disciples when he said: “Lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,” which promise he made, not only to them, but to us also who should believe in his name through their word.. . .
And, forsooth, following profane men, led astray by their carnal sense, they have calumniated the Church of Christ our God, which he hath espoused to himself, and have failed to distinguish between holy and profane, styling the images of our Lord and of his Saints by the same name as the statues of diabolical idols. . . .Therefore, with all diligence, making a thorough examination and analysis, and following the trend of the truth, we diminish nought, we add nought, but we preserve unchanged all things which pertain to the Catholic Church, and following the Six Ecumenical Synods, especially that which met in this illustrious metropolis of Nice, as also that which was afterwards gathered together in the God-protected Royal City.
And then they recite the Creed, re-affirm the anathemization of heresies, etc.And, forsooth, following profane men, led astray by their carnal sense, they have calumniated the Church of Christ our God, which he hath espoused to himself, and have failed to distinguish between holy and profane, styling the images of our Lord and of his Saints by the same name as the statues of diabolical idols. . . .Therefore, with all diligence, making a thorough examination and analysis, and following the trend of the truth, we diminish nought, we add nought, but we preserve unchanged all things which pertain to the Catholic Church, and following the Six Ecumenical Synods, especially that which met in this illustrious metropolis of Nice, as also that which was afterwards gathered together in the God-protected Royal City.
To make our confession short, we keep unchanged all the ecclesiastical traditions handed down to us, whether in writing or verbally, one of which is the making of pictorial representations, agreeable to the history of the preaching of the Gospel, a tradition useful in many respects, but especially in this, that so the incarnation of the Word of God is shown forth as real and not merely phantastic, for these have mutual indications and without doubt have also mutual significations.
We, therefore, following the royal pathway and the divinely inspired authority of our Holy Fathers and the traditions of the Catholic Church (for, as we all know, the Holy Spirit indwells her), define with all certitude and accuracy that just as the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross, so also the venerable and holy images, as well in painting and mosaic as of other fit materials, should be set forth in the holy churches of God, and on the sacred vessels and on the vestments and on hangings and in pictures both in houses and by the wayside, to wit, the figure of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of our spotless Lady, the Mother of God, of the honourable Angels, of all Saints and of all pious people. For by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them; and to these should be given due salutation and honourable reverence (ἀσπασμὸν καὶ τιμητικὴν προσκύνησιν, not indeed that true worship of faith (λατρείαν which pertains alone to the divine nature; but to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross and to the Book of the Gospels and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom. For the honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented. . . .
[After all had signed, the acclamations began (col. 576).]
The holy Synod cried out: So we all believe, we all are so minded, we all give our consent and have signed. This is the faith of the Apostles, this is the faith of the orthodox, this is the faith which hath made firm the whole world. Believing in one God, to be celebrated in Trinity, we salute the honourable images! Those who do not so hold, let them be anathema. Those who do not thus think, let them be driven far away from the Church. For we follow the most ancient legislation of the Catholic Church. We keep the laws of the Fathers. We anathematize those who add anything to or take anything away from the Catholic Church. We anathematize the introduced novelty of the revilers of Christians. We salute the venerable images. We place under anathema those who do not do this. Anathema to them who presume to apply to the venerable images the things said in Holy Scripture about idols. Anathema to those who do not salute the holy and venerable images. Anathema to those who call the sacred images idols. Anathema to those who say that Christians resort to the sacred images as to gods. Anathema to those who say that any other delivered us from idols except Christ our God. Anathema to those who dare to say that at any time the Catholic Church received idols.
-Source
You would do well to actually study what the early Church taught and believed before concluding that the Church contradicts the Bible; how can the Church contradict the Bible, when it was the Church that wrote the New Testament and compiled the list of Biblical books that you yourself use to this very day?We, therefore, following the royal pathway and the divinely inspired authority of our Holy Fathers and the traditions of the Catholic Church (for, as we all know, the Holy Spirit indwells her), define with all certitude and accuracy that just as the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross, so also the venerable and holy images, as well in painting and mosaic as of other fit materials, should be set forth in the holy churches of God, and on the sacred vessels and on the vestments and on hangings and in pictures both in houses and by the wayside, to wit, the figure of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of our spotless Lady, the Mother of God, of the honourable Angels, of all Saints and of all pious people. For by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them; and to these should be given due salutation and honourable reverence (ἀσπασμὸν καὶ τιμητικὴν προσκύνησιν
, not indeed that true worship of faith (λατρείαν which pertains alone to the divine nature; but to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross and to the Book of the Gospels and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom. For the honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented. . . . [After all had signed, the acclamations began (col. 576).]
The holy Synod cried out: So we all believe, we all are so minded, we all give our consent and have signed. This is the faith of the Apostles, this is the faith of the orthodox, this is the faith which hath made firm the whole world. Believing in one God, to be celebrated in Trinity, we salute the honourable images! Those who do not so hold, let them be anathema. Those who do not thus think, let them be driven far away from the Church. For we follow the most ancient legislation of the Catholic Church. We keep the laws of the Fathers. We anathematize those who add anything to or take anything away from the Catholic Church. We anathematize the introduced novelty of the revilers of Christians. We salute the venerable images. We place under anathema those who do not do this. Anathema to them who presume to apply to the venerable images the things said in Holy Scripture about idols. Anathema to those who do not salute the holy and venerable images. Anathema to those who call the sacred images idols. Anathema to those who say that Christians resort to the sacred images as to gods. Anathema to those who say that any other delivered us from idols except Christ our God. Anathema to those who dare to say that at any time the Catholic Church received idols.
-Source
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kaoticprofit
Active Member
Rome has been branded as the harlot because of it's past. The reformers were convinced that since Rome crucified Christ, destroyed the Temple and persecuted people, (which they no longer do), it would also re-emerge in the end-times as the Whore of Babylon. Millions of people believe in the RRE because that's what's been taught for centuries. What I want to know is where is the scriptural evidence and why are there so many contradictions to the theory of the RRE.
The bottom line is Rome did not give birth to harlot religions. Babylon did. Rome acquired them from Babylon but so did every place else. Rome no longer commits abominations. And there's not one verse of bible prophecy that points the finger to Rome in any way.
People are moving away from the Revived Roman Empire theory because there's a lack of evidence for it and an overwhelming amount of evidence against it.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
The references used in Revelations had not one thing to do with the church at Rome but was used to refer to the Roman Empire itself, with "Babylon the Great" being a reference to the empire and the feminine form of "Babylon" in one of the epistles attributed to Peter referring to the city of Rome. To attribute Revelation's accounts to the Roman church makes not one iota of sense.
Dear kao,
Spoken like a true apologist. The 3rd Reich of the 20th Century was indeed a revival of the Roman Empire, and it was supposed to last for 1000 years. Actually the Kaiser also took his title from Caesar, as well as the Czar of Russia. The slaughter of 6 million Jews might be considered an abomination, but that is not the true abomination that the title of "Babylon the Great the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth" really is directed at. It is that Babylon's daughter's, the church's doctrines, are not in the heeding of Scripture or of the Testimony of Yeshua, but the glorification of the Nephilin, known as the gods of Rome, such as Sol Invictus and Ishtar. The glorification of Sol Invictus, by Constantine decreeing that the "Day of the Sun" would be the day of rest, and that Easter, Ishtar's day, would be commemorated by the church, unlike the practice of Yeshua, who actually held to the feast of Passover on the 14th of the 1st month of the year.
You are correct, Babylon is the Mother, but the RCC is a daughter who has many daughters herself. Like mother like daughter, there is not much difference.
As for verses, try Dan 2, whereas Rome, signified by iron, will not be completely destroyed until the stone cut without hands crushes Rome in its final form as feet of iron and clay. Try Rev 17:11,"and the beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is one of the seven, and he goes to destruction".
Constantine's law of 321 [C.E] uniting Christians and pagans in the observance of the "venerable day of the sun" It is to be noted that this official solar worship, the final form of paganism in the empire , was not the traditional Roman-Greek religion of Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, and the other Olympian deities. It was a product of the mingling Hellenistic-Oriental elements, exemplified in Aurelian's establishment of Eastern Sun worship at Rome as the official religion of the empire, and in his new temple enshrining Syrian statutes statues of Bel and the sun . Thus at last Bel, the god of Babylon, came into the official imperial temple of Rome, the center of the imperial religion. It was this late Roman-Oriental worship of one supreme god, symbolized by the sun and absorbing lesser divinities as subordinates or manifestations of the universal deity, that competed with young Christianity. This was the Roman religion that went down in defeat but infiltrated and colored the victorious church with its own elements, some of which can be seen to this day. (Cramer 4)
On March 7, 321, Sunday was declared the official day of rest, on which markets were banned and public offices were closed,[ Constantine the Great and Christianity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I don't think you're very well-acquainted with Roman Catholicism. I'm no Roman, but I won't let this slight go unnoticed. The Roman Catholics only believe in one God--the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
I know that you are a Christian and that you love God, and I thank God for that. Because of that, I will say this: the fact that you implicitly equated our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with a pagan sun god should give you real pause. I'll give you a chance to revise your statement before we move on.
And I don't think you understand what I said about the Eastern Churches... We are not Rome's daughters, nor have we ever been, nor will we ever be. Many of our Churches existed even before the Roman Church, and if you are in any way familiar with church history or with Byzantine and Latin theology, then you will know that we are in no way descended from the Roman (read: Latin, Italian) Church. The Roman Church existed only in Italy and Northern Africa, and nowhere else. Everywhere else in the empire, different Churches not subject to Rome existed.
This is one of the oddest accusations I've ever seen levelled against Catholicism. Do you care to clarify these remarks?
Again, I cannot let this idea about God-loving Catholics go uncorrected. Many accuse Catholics of omitting the commandment against idolatry, but this is not so.
One important thing to know is that the Catholics number the Ten Commandments different than Protestants, and this can lead to some unfortunate confusion and misunderstanding among those who don't take a few seconds to look a little more carefully. Here is the First Commandment according to the Catholic numbering:
"I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them."
As you can see, the Catholic numbering of the Ten Commandments indeed preserves the commandment forbidding idolatry--they just do so with a different numbering scheme, whereby the forbidding of adultery is lumped in with all the other stuff about worshipping only God.
Yes, it was the Church that settled the doctrinal disputes and refuted the Arian heresy, not Constantine. Constantine facilitated the Council, but he himself didn't decide any of the Council's decisions.
Except 1, Christianity has no pagan gods mingled within it, and 2, Christianity (as you know) wouldn't become the state religion of the empire until Theodosius.
What evidence do you have that there were idols of the emperor following Christianity's becoming the state religion, and not just commemorative statues (like what we have with Mt. Rushmore)?
Wrong. the Early Church was worshipping on Sunday centuries before Constantine.
From the Epistle of Barnabas written between 70 and 131 AD:
Ye perceive how He speaks: Your present Sabbaths are not acceptable to Me, but that is which I have made, [namely this,] when, giving rest to all things, I shall make a beginning of the eighth day, that is, a beginning of another world. Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day [i.e. Sunday] with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead.1670 And1671 when He had manifested Himself, He ascended into the heavens.
From St. Ignatius of Antioch's (a personal student of St. John, and supposedly the child who sat on Christ's lap in the Gospel--he WAS the right age to be that child at the time of Jesus) Epistle to the Magnesians, chapter 9, written roughly 105 AD:
If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things680 have come to the possession of a new681 hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance682 of the Lord’s Day, [i.e. Sunday] on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death—whom some deny, by which mystery we have obtained faith,683 and therefore endure, that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only Master—how shall we be able to live apart from Him, whose disciples the prophets themselves in the Spirit did wait for Him as their Teacher?
From St. Justin Martyr's First Apology, chapter 67, written around 150 AD:
And on the day called Sunday,1913 all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits. . . But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.
It falls under the category of not having any gods before God.
Again, you're forgetting Malachi 4:2, one of the passages from the Old Testament. I'll quote it for you so you can see:
But to you who fear My name
The Sun of Righteousness shall arise
With healing in His wings;
This verse is a prophecy about the coming of Christ. So calling Christ the "Sun of Righteousness" is not a new thing; this was certainly known to the Apostles, because remember, Jesus opened the eyes and hearts of the Apostles to understand everything written about Him in the Old Testament. That's how ancient this concept is. So the idea of Christ being the Sun of Righteousness far precedes the era of Constantine.
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jtartar
Well-Known Member
caritas,
Many believe that the Catholic Church is the Great Harlot sitting on the back of the seven headed, ten horned, Scarlet Colored Wild Beast, because she demonstrates many of the descriptions. Didn't she persecute true Christians during the dark ages, burning many at the stake, especially those who tried to translate the Bible into languages that could be understood by the common people, and not kept in Latin, which few understand. What about the Crusades?? The Inquisitions?? The Catholic Church was the cause and the force behind them, causing the greatest suffering, and torture in history.
BUT, the Catholic Church is NOT the Great Harlot, but just a part of it. This Great Harlot, Babylon the Great is actually the Whole World Empire of False Religion, with Catholicism being a big part.
The reason for this understanding is the Beast she is riding. This Scarlet Colored Wild Beast is the same as the Image of the Wild The Beast mentioned at Rev 13:14-18. This Image is identified at Rev 17:7,8, as the United Nations, which started out as the League of Nations in 1920, then was not during WW2, then present again in 1945, as the United Nations,
The reason this beast has seven heads is : This is the number of World Powers throughout history, who had dealings with God's chosen people. They arte Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medes and Persions, Greece, Rome, and the Anglo-American World Power, NOW RULING, The USA and Briton. Consider Rev 17:9-11. John is writing, he lived during the Roman World Power, sixth one, Anglo-American, the seventh, and the Eighth will be The United Nations, very shortly. The reason??? Because the USA is realizing that we cannot be the policemen of the world, this country will soon call on the United Nations to help bring peace on earth.
This will be a very trying time, because the TEN KINGS, mentioned at Rev 17:12,13,17, will attack Babylon the Great and destroy her, because God put it into their minds to destroy False Religion, Rev 17:16-18.
When you see the United Nations gaining power, the end of this system will be very close. Every one not in the ONE RELIGION that God is blessing, will not survive!!! This is the most critical time in all of mankind's history!!!