The End Time Church: From the Cathedrals to the Catacombs

By Dan L. White

Copyright ©2019 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB) which is in the public domain.

Chapter 65

Balaam, Emperor of Rome

The Jews declared that Caesar was their king. “We have no king except Caesar,” John 19:15.

Would the Christians do the same thing?

Actually, the whole world had some kind of Caesar or king, except for the Christians —

Who had the Son of God.

Soon after the Flood, Nimrod set himself up as the first emperor, king or Caesar. Yahweh did not set Nimrod up as a king. God didn’t even set up Noah or Shem as king. God did not set any human being as king of the earth.

In fact, He did the opposite.

Instead of putting everyone under one ruler, God told them to spread out around the earth, so it was geographically impossible — at that time — for one human king to rule over all people. Yahweh Himself was their king and He was the only one who could rule over all humanity, spread all over the world.

But Satan has another system —

Centralized human power.

So all over the earth, humanity rejected their heavenly King and set up human kings, with each king trying to climb above all the others. The best killer became the biggest king. “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before Yahweh” — a mighty hunter of people.

Later, Yahweh rescued Israel from Pharaoh in Egypt and carried them to the Promised Land. Instead of giving them another Pharaoh, He gave them judges to teach His laws and judgments. Yahweh Himself was still their king.

But Israel rejected Yahweh as king and demanded a king they could see. Judah did have some good kings, perhaps 7, but none were perfect as Yahweh is. Most of Judah’s and Samaria’s kings were bad, like 34 out of 41, leading the people into lawlessness. The kingdom of Israel/Samaria was destroyed and in Judah, the throne of David was in ruins.

When the Jews returned from Babylon, they again had a nation but they did not have a king of David’s line. They had wanted a king like the world, so they were put under the kings of the world. However, they were promised that a descendant of good King David would be given the throne of David.

Ezek 21 Jewish Publication Society Tanakh 1917

25) thus saith the Lord GOD: The mitre shall be removed, and the crown taken off; this shall be no more the same: that which is low shall be exalted, and that which is high abased.
26) A ruin, a ruin, a ruin, will I make it; this also shall be no more, until he comes whose right it is, and I will give it him.

The kingship was in ruins and would be no more, until He came whose right it is.

And then He came…

Yeshua, the King of the Jews, came to rebuild the ruins of David’s throne and to establish the Kingdom of God.

Matt 13
47) “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a dragnet, that was cast into the sea, and gathered some fish of every kind,
48) which, when it was filled, they drew up on the beach. They sat down, and gathered the good into containers, but the bad they threw away.
49) So will it be in the end of the world. The angels will come forth, and separate the wicked from among the righteous,
50) and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.”

The King of the Kingdom of Heaven is gathering the subjects of His kingdom. Like Israel in Egypt, these subjects were slaves — but slaves of sinful human nature. They are redeemed by Yahweh from sin and their sinful nature, and follow no other king but Him. Only He can free them from the slavery of sin.

The King gathers His subjects together into a scattered flock, leading them through the wilderness of Satan’s world. He gives them His spirit to overcome Satan, Satan’s world, and their own human nature.

The earliest Christians wanted to huddle together in Jerusalem and wait for the Kingdom of God. After the Flood, “Yahweh scattered them [the people] abroad on the surface of all the earth,” Gen 11:9. In the same way, Yeshua had the Christianos scatter from Jerusalem, to spread the message of the King.

Yeshua did not appoint a pope, chief apostle, or overarching archbishop to rule His flock. In reality, no human could rule over all those dispersed people. Only Yahweh Himself, as Yeshua the salvation of Yahweh, could reign over His scattered flock.

However, this scattered assembly soon wanted to set up visible human rulers to follow. Corinth tried to do that with Paul, Peter and Apollo. Later Marcus became the first Gentile bishop over the Jerusalem area and he led the Christians who stayed there into anomia, or Commandment breaking. In time, many other bishops gradually acquired elevated titles, distinctive dress, and pontifical prestige and power — like Christian rabbis.

Matt 23
5) …They make their phylacteries broad, enlarge the fringes of their garments,
6) and love the place of honor at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues,
7) the salutations in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi, Rabbi’ by men.

Christian religious rulers ruled a diocese like mini-kings, following the common pattern of putting human kings between them and the heavenly King. The most prestigious bishop of all came to be the bishop of Rome. Since the emperor of Rome ruled the carnal world, it seemed natural that the bishop of Rome should rule the ecclesiastical world. Caesar was the pontifex maximus of the empire. The bishop of Rome would be the pontifex maximus of the religious empire.

However, there came a time when the pontifex maximus of the Roman Empire became like the pontifex maximus of the Roman Church.

The emperors of Rome persecuted Christians for two and a half centuries. For  as long as the history of the United States from the late 18^th century to the early 21^st century, Rome tried to exterminate the people of Christ.

That didn’t work.

Then Satan tried a new tactic, a subtle approach, a different twist, a different fist —

Constantine.

Constantine was a fairly typical Roman emperor.

Not good.

One writer for the Foundation for Economic Education, Lawrence Reed, tried to answer the question, “Who would you rank as the Empire’s worst Emperor?”

I deplore concentrated power so I really don’t like any of them. Of the grand total of 178 emperors—81 in the Western Empire and 97 in the Eastern—dozens of them were loathsome tyrants with little redeeming value.

Power does so much more than corrupt. It attracts the already-corrupted and gives them the wherewithal to administer their corruption. It feeds on arrogance, narcissism, and self-deception. It dements the mind until it embraces schemes that ruin the lives of others. It rots the soul. I can think of no more destructive motivation than the lust for it. Rare is the individual who emerges a better person for having possessed it. Roman history demonstrates these truths vividly.

Power rots the soul. This is true of political or church positions. The more power, the more rot.

Reed then mentioned some of the worst of the rotten Roman emperors, like Nero who used Christians for torches; Commodus, who had a harem of 300 young women and 300 boys, and could have passed for a modern day Democrat; and Elagabalus, of whom one historian said, “The name Elagabalus is branded in history above all others” on account of his “unspeakably disgusting life.” Reed then concludes that Caligula was the worst of all. History calls him the mad emperor, but often tries to say that his evils were caused by a mental disease instead of a spiritual one.

In trying to pick the worst Roman emperor, Reed observes, “Picking a really bad despot out of 178 despots is like shooting fish in a barrel. You’ll get one no matter where you aim.”

He concludes his article this way.

The intoxicant known as power knows no equal. It is malevolent by its very nature. It has enslaved, tortured, and murdered more people than any other poisonous impulse in history. Perhaps the philosopher Eric Hoffer put it best when he wrote,… “absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes.”
https://fee.org/articles/caligula-plumbing-the-depths-of-ancient-tyranny, 9/24/19

Interesting concept — “absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes.” Was there ever a dictator, political or ecclesiastical, who wasn’t trying to do good for his people?

And then there was Constantine.

Constantine is not called just Constantine, as Nero was called Nero or Tiberius was called Tiberius. Even to this day Constantine is called —

“Constantine the Great!”

Why?

Because he was the first Christian emperor and set the course of the Empire and the Church for centuries.

How can the one who is hailed as the first Christian emperor, who formed European and Christian culture, be a typical Roman emperor?

For one thing, Constantine got his position, like Augustus and others, by killing off his competition. Then as emperor, he fought repeated wars, including civil wars against his fellow Romans, to secure his own position. Pretty typical emperor there.

Diocletian had reorganized the Empire government into the Tetrarchy, rule of four. He appointed fellow officer Maximian with the title of augustus or co-emperor in 286. In 293, Diocletian appointed Galerius and Constantius, Constantine’s father, as caesars, or junior co-emperors. Those four men, the Tetrarchy, each ruled over a quarter of the vast empire, from Britain to Egypt.

Diocletian and Maximian both abdicated in 305. That raised Galerius and Constantius to augustus or full emperors, and then they appointed two new caesars or junior emperors, Maximunus and Severus.

Well, can you guess what happened?

That’s right. Power hungry men do not like to share power, so the Tetrarchy led to anarchy —

Civil war. Each emperor wanted to be the new Nimrod.

Constantine prevailed. In those civil wars, he was the most uncivil.

Constantine killed Maximian, his wife’s father, who had returned from retirement. Later Constantine defeated Maximian’s son Maxentius — Constantine’s brother-in-law — and paraded his head through Rome. Finally Constantine defeated Licinius, another co-ruler, and had him executed, along with his son, who was Constantine’s nephew.

Thus Constantine defeated the Tetrarchy and Rome again had a monarchy —

Actually a Conarchy — just Constantine.

So Constantine became emperor in the typical way. He killed off all the competition.

Those weren’t all he killed.

Remember what Augustus said about King Herod, that it was better to be his hog than his son? Herod didn’t kill swine because he didn’t eat pork, but he did kill his sons to protect his own position.

Constantine was a little different. He killed his hogs and his wife and son. It seems that his wife Fausta condemned Crispus, Constantine’s son by another wife, and Constantine had Crispus killed. Later it seems that Fausta implicated Crispus only to augment the position of her own sons by Constantine, so Constantine had her killed. Such actions are not that unusual for a dictator.

Constantine was a superior military leader. He had to be, to kill off all his competition.

Encyclopedia Britannica, article Constantine I —
In military policy Constantine enjoyed unbroken success, with triumphs over the Franks, Sarmatians, and Goths to add to his victories in the civil wars; the latter, in particular, show a bold and imaginative mastery of strategy. Constantine was totally ruthless toward his political enemies, while his legislation, apart from its concessions to Christianity, is notable mainly for a brutality that became characteristic of late Roman enforcement of law.

Constantine ruled brutally. That’s what emperors did; that’s what he did. That’s not what Christians did.

He is hailed to this day as the first Christian emperor, who changed Rome from an empire that killed Christians into a Christian empire.

When Balaam couldn’t curse Israel, he brought a curse on them by getting them to mix with Moab. Almost two millennia later, Satan did the same thing with the Christians. When the power of Rome could not eliminate the Christians, Satan simply got the Christians to join Rome. And that’s where Constantine came in.

God uses power centered in Himself. Satan uses power centered in people. But Satan often leads the multitudes to think these power mongers are led by God. What’s more, the power mongers, whether in religions or in reichs, themselves often believe they are led by God.

I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord’s work. Adolf Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936

This is a great lesson of the past and for the future. Satan deceives people to believe that power mongers are led by God. And the power mongers are so deceptive and effective in their role because they believe it themselves. ‘Follow me as I follow God!’

So did God use Constantine to make the Roman Empire Christian? Or did Satan use Constantine to merge the Roman Church into the Roman Empire? Was Constantine a great Christian emperor who helped make Europe Christian? Or did Constantine pull off one of the greatest con games in history?