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Yet alongside this there is evidence of increasing dissatisfaction with religion. On the other hand, some hold very extreme views of religion but with more of a political agenda attached to it. Many Christian churches, synagogues and Mosques prefer to please the men who provide the money, honor, political recognition. An observer at a Canadian conference of Catholic bishops complained that a typical response from people in general is: “Today each person has deep questions inside. You don’t find the answers in religion, in the church… There’s something missing in the church. When we actually know what religion and, in this instance, Christianity does for the individual and how a person’s powers are enlightened by an understanding and appropriation of Christianity, life ought to be infinitely more worth living. So naturally the question arises, is Christianity the answer or as the many others a problem. Let’s take a look. What does the word Christian really mean? Some popular views are: Anybody who believes in Jesus was baptized in a Christian house of worship belongs to and attends a Christian church does no harm and helps out when he can, who lives by the Bible who have been born.
On July 2, 1961, the late DRP. Robert J. McCracken told the congregation at Riverside Church in New York that “what is needed in the churches is more wholehearted commitment” and “men and women who are devoted, body, mind, and soul, to the service of God and their fellows… Nobody ever took Christ for granted. He was such a disturbing personality that the authorities had to liquidate Him. Real Christianity is always an explosive force… ” Ionian Smart a religious writer and university lecturer wrote: “Christianity is the most mysterious of the great religions… T ranges from Eastern Orthodoxy, through Catholicism, to a great variety of Protestant churches and sects… T can approve war and pacifism, monasteries and secular attitudes, hierarchy and democracy, preaching and ritual, philosophers and those who reject philosophy. ” How has religion evolved and compromised itself over the millenniums? Has it been an “explosive force” for the good? Let’s examine Well, Christianity was established twenty centuries ago, and Christendom (Christ domain or kingdom) another name for Christianity has had plenty of time in which to show what it would do or could accomplish.
After all this time, and in the face of the present world outlook, it is not too soon for us to hold verdict on Christendom Christianity). Christianity is built upon the name ‘Christ’, which is a title by which Jesus of Bethlehem-Judas was called only after his baptism and so-called heavenly anointed in the fall of 29 C. E. The coming of Christianity was meant to hold out to all obedient men and women the hope of heavenly everlasting life in perfect happiness with the LORD GOD. When Jesus was born in the year 2 B. C. There was certainly that implied declaration of his glory.
In the first century, Jewish Christianity certainly must have been held in great esteem. Well, the Jews boasted that Moses spoke with God. Furthermore, look at the magnificent temple, with the Holy and Most Holy compartments. You could observe its striking beauty, its strength, its firm foundation. The Jewish priesthood ran all the way back to Aaron and his sons, members of the tribe of Levi. The high priest was a descendant of this special line. The Jews had the Law covenant, given to Moses by God himself. This monarchy was the possession of the Jews.
Jerusalem was the throne city from which God’s rule was to go forth. Now look at the Christians in Jerusalem. What did they have? The Christians had nothing by comparison. Their leader Jesus was dead, and had died as an ignominious criminal. He had no prominence as far as the Jewish leaders were concerned. He was the son of a lowly carpenter and from Nazareth. As for education, he had no formal training in the rabbinical schools. He lacked knowledge and education from the Jews’ point of view. Among his followers there were very few learned men.
Fishermen, tax collectors, and even Gentiles comprised his followers, and those Gentiles were certainly not of the natural seed of Abraham. How could the Christians think for one moment that they had the favor of God and that God was dealing with them? The Jews felt they were the ones chosen by God, because they were the offspring of Abraham. Christians met in upper rooms or other out-of-the-way places, while the Jews had their beautiful temple at which to assemble. As time left the era of the Christ into the succeeding centuries serious events stared to unfold in Christendom. How was Christendom influenced?
Saturn was worshiped for bringing a golden age to Rome. Once a year a seven-day celebration called the Saturnalia, was held in his honor. Historians tell us that it was from this pagan festival, which was kept in December that Christendom acquired its Christmas worship. In the course of time, the prominent Greek gods found their way into the Roman pantheon, although they were known by different names. Also, deities of still other lands were adopted by the Romans, including the Persian Matthias (whose birthday was celebrated on December 25). Zeus (Roman Jupiter), Poseidon (Roman Neptune), a brother of Zeus.
Apollo, the sun god, was more respectable than his father Zeus. Ares (Roman Mars) was the god of war. Hermes (Roman Mercury) the god, the queen of Olympus was Hear (Roman Junco), a sister and one of the wives of Zeus. On January 13, 313 C. E. Constantine as again Pontiffs Maximum published his famous edict of toleration in favor of the Christians and they were made eligible to public office. The great centers of so-called ‘Christian theology resided in Antioch, Alexandria, Cartage, Caesar, Jerusalem and various cities in Asia Minor. Efforts to establish Romeos primacy went in full force with Constantine. In 321 C. E.
Constantine made a Sunday observance law, the day of the sun-god, Sol, whose symbol the cross is made a day exempt from being Judicial and its observance made a legal duty. He fused Christianity with the pagan Roman cult ND made this a “universal” or “catholic” form of worship the state religion. This was an effort to heal the growing breach between the rival Christian sects whose center was in Rome and Constantinople and to brand as heretical Christian teachers in other cities. The First Ecumenical Council of Nickname in 325 C. E. A church council, called by Constantine, met in Nice, Asia Minor, to decide on such issues of divinity of Jesus.
Pontiffs Maximum Constantine made his decision at the Nice Creed and came out in favor of the Trinitarian teaching of Euthanasia. So on the trinity was issued and enforced. It was held in order to condemn the ARIN anti-Trinitarian “heresy’. This original creed drawn up at Nice did not give personality to the ‘Holy Ghost’ of “Holy Spirit. ‘ Later additions, believed to have been made at the Council of Constantinople in 381 C. E. , did address the issue the divinity of the ‘Holy Spirit’. Some of these teachers became what Christendom churches call church fathers. They are generally divided into ante-Nice and post-Nice fathers.
The body of doctrine forged at these councils included the Trinity, belief in Mary as the “mother of God” and other dogmas that had nothing to do with Christianity. These church councils also condemned various “heresies,” thus contributing to the creation of still further subdivisions (sects) of Christendom. Rome succeeded in establishing its primacy over the churches in other cities. Roman Emperor Constantine realized that he could use Christianity to consolidate the declining Empire, so the bishop of Rome saw that paganism could provide popular appeal to his variety of Christianity.
The Roman church had adopted the pagan Sunday as the day to celebrate Easter, whereas churches in Eastern cities had been celebrating it on whatever day of the week Insane 14 of the Jewish calendar fell. Eastern churches were inclined to follow Arias, who denied the Trinity doctrine; Rome quickly adopted this pagan idea of a triune god. Then, too, the Roman emperors themselves were consecrated and deified. Pontiffs Maximum Constantine fell sick in 337 C. E. He is baptized, and dies, in Macromedia. After his death the Roman Senate (still pagan) places him among the gods.
The eastern religious congregations reckon him among the saints. The Greek, Septic and Russian churches celebrate the festival of Saint Constantine on May 21 . Constantine had succeeded during his lifetime in bringing about a fusion of pagan elision and Christianity, inadvertently, making Christianity truly Babylonian. The worship of the emperor made many to compromise under intense persecution. The book Imperial Rome explains: “Only 80 years after the last great wave of persecution of Christians, the Church itself was beginning to execute heretics, and its clerics were wielding power almost equivalent to that of the emperors. The New Encyclopedia Britannica adds: “Under Christianity, Greek heroes and even deities survived as saints. ” Alexandria, Antioch, Cartage, and Odessa, all centers of theological activity, developed distinctive schools of religious thought. Herbert Wads, a former Anglican Canon of Canterbury, says the Alexandria school, for example, was “particularly influenced by Platonic ideas,” assigning allegorical meanings to most “Old (Hebrew) Testament” statements. The Antioch school adopted a more literal, more critical attitude toward the Bible.
Certainly Christianity has no respect for loyalty to their God as it was replaced with loyalty to an Emperor, Hellenic and Balloon’s gods. They put these Greek and Roman gods and even Emperors on par with their Christianity. Christianity is showing its resolve and not for their Christ. As result, divisions and sects began to enter the inner sanctum of the Christian faith. Now new creeds started to develop. These creeds were used as a means to define the beliefs of a church to distinguish it from other churches. Various creeds developed as doctrinal changes were adopted.
For example, at the Council of Nickname, the statement that the Son was ‘of one substance’ with the Father was added to an earlier baptismal creed. And at the Council of Constantinople the further statement that the Holy Spirit is ‘adored and glorified together with the Father and the Son’ was added. What, then, about the Apostles’ Creed? Because of its name, many people believe that it was actually drawn up by the apostles of Jesus Christ. But was this creed developed by the original 12 Apostles? Today, among the churches of Christendom, “there are over 1 50 officially recognized creeds and confessions,” says the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Professor G. C. Stead wrote in The Expository Times: “Anyone who has read at all extensively in early Christian literature is bound to come to a different conclusion. ” He argued it would be difficult to explain why there were so many different ‘confessions’ and ‘statements of faith’ in existence among the early hurries. The fact is that “a statement of Christian belief which approximately agrees in wording with the Apostles’ Creed cannot be found in any surviving writing earlier than A. D. 340. ” Let’s Examine the Apostles’ Creed set forth in 390 C. E. L believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost; born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontoons Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitters on the right and of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to Judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.
Amen. ” What is also interesting is that the Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Ecumenical are all framed slightly different. What a feat for the “Apostles”. Nothing is said here about God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost as being “one God. ” The Apostles’ Creed formulated a great controversy over the nature of Christ. What exactly was his relationship to God? Was he lesser than and distinct from God, or was Jesus God himself? As the centuries moved on a great reformation lay around the corner. It started in Germany with a man named Luther.
Martin Luther was born in 1483 and died a natural death February 18, 1546. He started The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and was mixed up with religious and secular politics of Western Europe and this led to the marriage union of the Protestant sects with the political states. On October 31, 1517, enraged at the Catholic Church’s campaign of selling indulgences, which to him amounted to divine bribery, the selling of forgiveness of ins, Luther nailed his famous 95 protests on the church door of Wattenberg, Germany.
This one act touched off what became known as the Protestant Reformation. The European thinking the included the rightist conservative, which is rooted in ancient aristocracy, class privilege (castes) and traditions perpetuated by Roman Catholicism. It hated change, hates intrusion, and thinks itself superior. The shades of thinking vary toward the center, where there is the liberal mind that is largely the product of the Protestant Reformation democratically and progressively desiring only gradual change.
Protestantism retained the basic doctrines of the Catholic Church; in organizational structure it maintained the clergy-laity division. We must keep in mind that Martin Luther didn’t want to break away from the church but rather reform it. Professor E. Washburn Hopkins explains in his book Origin and Evolution of Religion, page 336: “To Jesus and Paul the doctrine of the trinity was apparently unknown; at any rate, they say nothing about it”. The New Catholic Encyclopedia says of the Trinity: “It is not, as already seen, directly and immediately the word of God. -??Volume 14, page 304. Episcopal professor of church history James Arthur Mueller, who writes: “This lack of a formulated doctrine of the Trinity reflects the theological thought of the second century. In the works of Justine Martyr, who wrote in about 150 A. D. , the preexistence of the Son is stressed, yet in relation to the Father He is spoken of as ‘in the second place. “-??Creeds and Loyalty, page 9. Actually it was some 400 years or more after the death of Christ that the concept of three persons in one God’ was finally formulated by men and introduced into the church.
Actually, the evidence reveals that the “Apostles’ Creed” was framed by men living undress of years later. The Faith of Christendom, a source book of creeds and confessions, edited by B. A. Cherish, observes: “So far, then, from being composed by the Apostles in person, we have no reason to assume that the Creed which bears their title appeared less than five hundred years after their time. ” By the fourth century some churchmen, including the young Archdeacon Euthanasia, were arguing that Jesus and God were one and the same person.
On the other hand, men such as the Arias held to the position that Jesus was created by God and was subordinate to is Father. In 325 C. E. A church council, called by Roman Emperor Constantine, met in Nice, Asia Minor, to decide on such issues. At this council pagan Emperor Constantine favored the side of Euthanasia. Therefore, the views expressed by Arias, although based solidly on the Bible, were declared heretical. In its original form, the Nice Creed was clearly designed to combat the position of Arias.
It concluded with this pronouncement, which was later dropped from the creed: “But those who say there was a time when he was not; or that he was not before he was begotten; or that e was made from that which had no being; or who affirm the Son of God to be of any other substance or essence, or created, or variable, or mutable, such persons doth the Catholic and Apostolic Church mathematics [curse]. ” However, later additions, believed to have been made at the Council of Constantinople in 381 C. E. , did. The creed drawn up at Nice in 325 C. E. , with its later alterations, passed into history as the Nice Creed.
It reads as follows: This is what was believed for centuries, but this has definitely been proved untrue. The Faith of Christendom observes on page 61 : “The attribution of the Creed to Euthanasia was exposed in the seventeenth century by the Dutch scholar G. J. Voss. It has been argued on internal evidence that the document may be dated to the period between A. D. 381 and 428. ” Thus, John J. Moment, in his book on the creeds, states flatly: “Euthanasia had been dead for five hundred years when it appeared. ” So much for the different Creeds and the Trinity.
Briefly, let’s look at something else very interesting. U. S. Catholic of December 1981, page 32, notes: “It is impossible to separate Christmas from its pagan origins. The magazine explains: “The Romans’ favorite festival was Saturnalia, which began on December 17 and ended with the ‘birthday of the unconquered sun’ (Natalie Solid Invite) on December 25. Somewhere in the second quarter of the fourth century, as’. N. Y officials of the Church of Rome decided December 25 would make a dandy day to celebrate the birthday of the ‘sun of righteousness’ Christmas was born”.
The Encyclopedia Britannica says: “There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament. ” “In ancient Rome, the first day of the year was given over to honoring Janis, the god of gates and ours and of beginnings and endings… New Year’s Day became a holy day in the Christian church in A. D. 487. “-??The World Book Encyclopedia (1982), Volume 14, page 237. The Encyclopedia Britannica comments: “There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers.
The sanctity of special times was an idea absent from the minds of the first Christians”. (1910), Volvo. VIII, p. 828. Universally, since its very commencement, Christianity or Christendom has saturated the earth into a valley of appalling tears. The darkness of death looms over it with blood dripping from the great sacrifice to its gods both religious and political. Hundreds of millions of people today put their faith and hope in an ordained religious orgy of a gathering that indulges in unrestrained emotional and arousing bliss.
The clergy of Christendom have persuaded, by decree, their members to allegiance by giving hopes that have no foundation and counterfeit fears of an eternal inferno. What makes this so upsetting is that no one claiming to be Christian is impervious to such a philosophically, fanatical, religious perspective. Many have made religions a refuge as if a security blanket’ that they may be made safe from aggressive and intolerable thoughts. It is a reassuring and common deception that gets many from one day to next.
But in the finality it is nothing more than a tranquilizer drug that numbs the senses for temporary relief. Belief in a Christian man named Jesus is actually a passion for a man with little to no history. It is a great intellectual and moral deception. We’re so fortunate as to be given so little evidence for such a ghastly suggestion to believe as one writer suggested. Deceptiveness, after all, is a subdivision of a perniciousness belief. Christianity, however, does stand having started in such pejorative manner.
Finally, the spirit of some Christians are paraphrased in such a manner; ‘I have discovered that almost everyone has come to a point when they have felt like they are a failure as a Christian. ‘ Christian disappointment is felt by millions of sincere people. They have sincerely tried to follow the example of the man Jesus and his congregation or church. They genuinely struggle to live up to their declaration of being a Christian. Somehow they still feel guilty and convicted no matter how hard they try. Often these are individuals that are more sincere than others.
They have come to the ‘altar’ many times. Yet in spite of their greatest work they still come back to the very same issues they came in with. Disheartened, countless people have come to the point where they just can’t go on. Either something is awful with them, or possibly, Christianity doesn’t have the same interest in them as it seems to have in others. They begin with a good intent, but crash always follows. Guilt Just about always follows the epic disease of failure. It is these sincere people that have the heaviest burden to carry with little comfort or consolation.
Perhaps pray more or read your Bible more, get more involved the congregation or go take a walk as if this is the solution to the tremendous since feeling inadequate. It is as if your sick heal yourself, you can you know, Christ loves you, you know. “No I don’t” they may in an undertone speak. This is all they have to offer. But the since of failure and guilt still lingers and follows as if a shadow. One of these days and perhaps it won’t be long that we will all wake up and it will all be gone. One of these days, perhaps?