In a later article of mine, in which I warned on the sodomite agenda, I wrote on how the homosexuals will go after wedding planners who refuse to organize a sodomite wedding:
If a pastor refuses to conduct a homosexual wedding, he will be punished, the same would go for a wedding planner who wishes not to organize a sodomite wedding.
Well, there is a new story in which a Mennonite wedding facility is being sued by the state of Iowa’s Civil Rights Commission, for their denying to have a homosexual marriage conducted, a decision which of course springs from their Christian faith.
This is being done in the name of “civil rights,” well, what about the right to discriminate? I don’t believe in discriminating people based on their race, I am talking about ideologies and wicked beliefs which deserve our discernment, and our censorship. The liberty for evil only gives the advantage to the wicked for them to take away the liberty of the good.
Sodomitism is an ideology, a belief system, which is guaranteed freedom by the US government, but seeks to end the freedom of Christians. It is based on a corruption of the natural order, it is grotesquely erroneous, and does not deserve freedom, for error has no right.
With this recent story, all I can say is this: Outlaw the sodomite before the sodomite outlaws you.
While the Christians of antiquity called themselves Catholic, there was a sect who rejected the legitimacy of the Papacy, on account that it reaccepted lapsed Christians who, out of fear, gave sacrifices to pagan gods during the early persecutions. These were called Novatians.
One could argue that these were the ancient equivalent to the Protestants, since they did not hold anti-Christian doctrines, as the Arians (who denied Christ’s divinity) or the Macedonians (who rejected the Holy Spirit as God), but subscribed to orthodox beliefs such as the Trinity and the Incarnation.
Regardless of this, there was enmity between the Catholics and the Novatians, and there seemed to be no prospect of them ever having concord with another, until a persecution came, and it was from an enemy who held indignation for both of them more than they had hatred for each other. These were the Arians.
The Arians, who were really the precursors to Muslims, were founded by one Arius, a fourth century presbyter in Egypt who denied the divinity of Christ, and who would later become one of the major influencers for the false prophet Muhammad, though the Arabian heretic and founder of Islam lived centuries after the death of Arius.
After Arius perished, Arianism had already infiltrated the Roman government, and over half of the empire was Arian, including the emperor, Constantius. A fervent follower of Arianism, Macedonius, was given license by the Roman king to exile and punish the bishops who did not accept Arianism; the mindset of these were no different than the Muslims today who conduct reminiscent persecutions against Christians .
The Arians began to inflict Catholics with numerous calamities, but their tyranny was not confined to only them, but also to the Novatians, regardless of the fact that they, like the Protestants, were not members of the Church, because they still, also like the Protestants, believed in the Holy Trinity.
The Arians were savage in their bloodlust; they took Novatian women and sawed off their breasts, and burnt the flesh of those resistant to their impiety.
In Constantinople, the Arians demolished many churches, both Catholic and Novatian, for their upholding of the Holy Trinity. The Novatian church in Cyzicus was as well destroyed, and after this the Arians headed toward a Novatian area in Paphlagonia. Now, it must be remembered that these Arians were not just wild zealots thirsty for blood, but trained warriors in the Roman army who converted to Arianism, and who were now being used by the heretics to extinguish the Christians.
When the Novatians heard of their coming, they armed themselves with hooks, hatchets, and whatever weapons they could possess. The army of heretical soldiers arrived and a battle ensued; the Novatians fought with great valiancy and zeal, and slew the great majority of the Arians.
It came to a point, within this great persecution, that Catholics and Novatians united, and even attended the same churches together in unison and concord one with another against the conspired violence of the Arian heretics.
The power of the Arian heresy was most effectively crushed by the Christian Roman Empire in a great war against the Vandals, who were slaughtering Christians for their belief in the Trinity, thanks to the formidable general, Belisarius. Eventually the same heretics were vanquished in Italy, Spain, and France, and orthodoxy was again reestablished.
But then in Arabia, a land not under the influence or jurisdiction of Christendom, an Arian monk met with an Arabian pagan, taught him his unitarian interpretations of the Scriptures, and the man would then adopt Arianism and build on it the heresy of all heresies. This Arabian was Muhammad, and his sect was Islam.
The Muslim attack upon Christendom is no different today. Muhammad was the most infamous student of Arianism, and today Christians are still being killed, and their churches destroyed, by these Arians who call themselves Muslims.
The haters of the Trinity will always seek the destruction of those who still believe that Christ is God in the flesh, regardless if you are Catholic or Protestant.
This struggle between Christian and Muslim is an eternal war, between the Unitarian and the Trinitarian, which has been lasting for innumerable centuries, and our only resolve will be to unite in the name of that most sacred Trinity, which will forever more be the vanquisher of the followers of the crescent.
The majority of persecution toward Christians has taken place in Nigeria, a secularly governed nation with freedom of religion, and not a sharia country.
A nation that has freedom–freedom of consciousness, freedom of thought–has the most persecution. Its not Pakistan, its not Somalia, but Nigeria, and the violence toward Christians is provoked and encouraged through anti-Christian propagation, because of the freedom of religion guaranteed by the constitution. This is not coincidental. Freedom and equality of religions and ideologies, allow wicked men to dominate good people.
Every person shall be entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom (either alone or in community with others, and in public or in private) to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
“freedom of thought,” permits freedom to believe in jihadism; freedom to ” propagate his religion or belief in worship,” allows for the instilling of teachings for the killing Christians.
The constitution allows for the inculcating of jihadism, and that is why they are enduring so much bloodshed, and the highest rate of persecution on the earth. In fact, it has been said that the teaching of sharia in Nigeria is protected by the constitution, as long as it is done within the context of private observance. Ben Nwabueze, a professor who teaches on the Nigerian legal system, had this to say:
The practice of the Shariah and the observance of moral precept and injunction in the Quran are personal matter for the individuals to be inculcated by teaching and preaching in the Quranic schools and Mosque by individual self-abnegation and self discipline not by enforcement through the coercive machinery of government
This modern idea, that as long as something is done and believed in privately, and within inner individual wills and convictions, then it is permissible. Freely allow what is evil to be done in private, and you will eventually be forced to see and do it in public. The evil is Islam, and the freedom it is given to be taught and spread, is the enabling of this evil.
Sharia is not precipitated by the government, and this is true, and so Boko Haram uses freedom to enforce it on the populace, through violence and terrorism.
Sure, what they are doing is against the law, and many Boko Haram members have been killed (this is to be applauded), but nonetheless, there have been no measures taken on the part of the Nigerian government, to prevent terrorism by hindering the teaching of the Islamic ideology, because it is protected by the constitution.
In Indonesia, Muslims have used violence and intimidation to shape the culture and the laws, and so Boko Haram is doing the same in Nigeria, and Al-Shabaab in Kenya.
As I have said before, the solution is not just a war on terror, but a war on error. Let us replace this taboo we call “the Enlightenment,” with the true enlightenment of Christ, before the darkness of Christendom’s enemies put away the light of civilization which now stands on the melting candle of docility.
All of civilization, came as a result of religious intolerance. When the Hebrews invaded Canaan, they overthrew the high places, for which children were burnt alive, toppled down the gods for which the heathens ate human flesh and indulged in the greatest violence, and placed the banner of Yahweh over the vanquished tabernacle of Molech.
When the Spaniard took Mexico, they purged the land of human sacrifice and cannibalism, shattered the idols which provoked men to bloodlust, and put the Cross over the demonic images which the people so revered.
After so much rich and revolutionary history, the modern era ushered in a new idea they called the “enlightenment,” which declared that all beliefs, both good and evil, deserve equal rights. Heresies such as Deism and Unitarianism arose within this era, and a number of thinkers, who grew in popularity, became the promoters of this new movement.
They were well known figures, such as Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Diderot, and Rousseau. Who were these men and were they really for liberty?
Their enlightenment vision of religious equality, has become sacred within the American conscious, because it made an impact on the US Constitution.
The First Amendment allows us freedom of speech. This in itself permits us to even question free speech itself including the right to question all the religious equality embedded in the US Constitution. While I have admired much of this constitution, I still question some of it’s tenets.
It was Voltaire, an ideologue behind the bloody French Revolution, who coined the phrase, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
I object. I refuse to die for somebody’s right to believe in the god of death, I would rather fight him for the God of life. To hell with Voltaire (an admirer of Muhammad) and all of his sycophants.
The freedom of religious equality is why in our day, soldiers die while busting terrorists. But in old Christendom, they busted FIRST their ideologies in order to prevent death.
I dare to question the taboo of questioning religious equality.
We don’t just need a war on terror, but a war onerror.
It is religious equality which enables men taken by the doctrines of demons to wreak only havoc and destruction, in the name of freedom.
I refuse to believe that sending our men to die in Afghanistan while the very ideology of Islamic fundamentalism reigns free under religious equality, as if this is all done for the cause of freedom.
So what sprouted the Nairobi mall massacre, in which over 60 people were butchered in the most horrendous and sadistic ways? How do terrorists concoct such diabolic thoughts for which they had people’s fingers sharpened with knives as if they were pencils to then force these victims to write their names using their blood as ink? They even mutilated testicles, severed off noses with pliers, and plunged knives into children’s helpless bodies!
Nairobi mall massacre, another consequence to religious tolerance and equality
How could we fight terrorists without shutting first the spigot of the bloody religious spring from which it gushes forth? The reality that is that what few in the mainstream conservative and Christian establishments want to admit, is that this slaughter of innocent people would have never taken place if Islam was not deemed a religion deserving equal rights with Christianity.
Yet, we have the Calvinist minister John Piper, who said
We believe that every religion, world view, or philosophy of life may freely endeavor to influence and shape our culture.
Piper should speak for himself, I do not believe that every worldview should be given the liberty to shape our culture. If what Piper says is true, then why do we fight abortion? This murderous license came as a result of feminists having the freedom to shape society with their dangerous ideas, and to eventually manage them to permeate government, and to ultimately have them approved by the state, since their philosophy was given equal status to all other ideologies and religions.
Abortion, the consequence of religious equality
The religiosity of this feminist cult, was expressed by justice Anthony Kennedy (Catholic), after the Casey decision of 1992 in which abortion rights were upheld, which would go inline with Piper’s statement on religious freedom:
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
This statement is not judicial, nor does it even have an air of legality, but it is metaphysical in its wordage and nature. Thus it is a religion, which should have never been given the liberty to be taught in society, and eventually accepted by the state.
The results of this are millions of children massacred, all of course in the name of “freedom.” A holocaust is done every year in America, with complete permission, while we talk of Hitler’s horrid Holocaust and say, “never again!” while it is occurring over and over again to the applause of the libertines who boast of being advancers of “equality and liberty.”
It is quite remarkable, how a few ideologues were able to have entire societies desensitized to murder, by covering their crimes with terms such as “the right to privacy,” “freedom of conscious,” and “reproductive rights.” We must stop being dictated by words and cliches, and instead ruled by the civility and wisdom of Scripture.
The term freedom has been so exalted and made into an idol, that we believe it justifies us to make countless human sacrifices to it’s altar.
The flourishing and fruition of the Islamic religion in Kenya, was enabled by the Kenyan constitution which guarantees religious equality:
Section 78 (1): Except with his own consent, no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of conscience, and for the purposes of this section that freedom includes freedom of thought and of religion, freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others, and both in public and in private, to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.11 (2): Every religious community shall be entitled, at its own expense, to establish and maintain places of education and to manage a place of education which it wholly maintains, and no such community shall be prevented from providing religious instruction for persons of that community in the course of any education provided at a place of education which it wholly maintains or in the course of any education which it otherwise provides.
To “provide a place of education” to Muslims is to permit them to build madrassas, the very spigot which oozes the blood of the innocent, in whose behalf I write this essay. With a constitution such as this, it does not surprise me that the Islamists have been able to build madrasas (Muslim schools) in Kenya to teach young people sharia, or in other words, the doctrines that justify the murders of Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims. Heretics use liberty to plan for the destruction of liberty.
Muslim boys in Islamic school, the incubators of terrorism
If there was a policy of intoleration in Kenya (a majority Christian nation) towards false and dangerous religions, the mall massacre would have not occurred, since there would have been no leeway for the jihadists to have propagated their riotous ideas, or their violent religion, and there would have been no means for the terrorists to have been allowed to be in Kenya, nor to feel confident in their destructive beliefs.
Young Muslim terrorists
This is not to say that the US Constitution promotes violence, since it wishes for everyone to worship peaceably, but that religious equality ends up contradicting itself, since one religion or ideology must eventually be superior to the rest. We see this even in America, where secularism has deeply rooted itself in the nation.
Terrorists and other violent ideologues and cultists, are usually inclined to congregate in nations which suffer their disastrous beliefs. This provokes confidence, and from confidence comes the comfort to teach bloodshed, and what follows such influence, are crime and murder.
I am not alone in my opinion. Marcel-François Lefebvre, warned his country of France, all the way back in 1989, that if they gave equal rights to Islam, Christians would be killed:
All of this violence is attributed to an idea, and the instilling of that idea to members of the populace, and this is all openly allowed through the religious equality of a nation’s constitution.
The human soul is like a richly fertile field, ideas are like seeds, and their fruit the consequences of those ideas. Ideas are what dictate our actions. This was greatly implied by St. James when he wrote:
Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. (James 2:18)
St. James
By not only pronouncing the Faith, but having an inner conviction in it, we do Christian actions.
Dangerous ideas bring forth poisonous fruit, they are the causes of violence, and we allow these very philosophies to flood society under the title of “religious equality,” and we do so proudly because we no longer believe that ideas matter.
The massacre which took place in the Nairobi mall, was done greatly as a result of Muslim clerics such as sheikh Ibrahim Omar (who was recently gunned down by angry Kenyans), and as we learn from Reuters, he was very popular amongst youths who felt “marginalized by the predominantly Christian government.”
His popularity was allowed to grow because of religious equality, and if it was not given rights in the constitution, then the bloodshed would have been prevented, and such dangerous ideas would have never gained the favor of so many youths.
President Obama’s Muslim family are currently fighting against Christianity in Kenya in their goal to transform the nation into a sharia state, and what is it that gives them this right but the religious equality of the Kenyan constitution.
But some might argue that these terrorists were Somali trained, but what the Muslims are doing in Kenya, they already did in Somalia. In Somalia, before it became a fully Islamic dominated country like it is now, there was a vibrant Christian community and even a very resplendent cathedral in Mogadishu, which can be seen in this photo:
Cathedral on the left to the Islamic minaret
Now, since Islam is the religion of the land, and not Christianity, this is what the cathedral became:
The Muslims want to bring this same chaos to Kenya.
Islam causes this destruction because it hates the Christian concept of God, and does not the Lord say that “all they that hate me love death”? and yet we believe that such bringers of death are worthy of freedom and equality.
When a British soldier was beheaded in broad daylight in London by a Muslim, everybody was attributing it to “radical Islam,” “Muslim extremism,” or just plain “Islam,” but nobody was pointing to the enabling of this violence: religious equality.
Many people laud themselves for believing in religious equality, or absolute equality. Many do not know that this concept is very new and modern, and, what many do not realize, is that it has enabled innumerable wicked persons to use their liberty to seize the liberty of others.
In the old days of Christendom, the ones which many Christians are either ashamed to even speak of, or proud to have nothing to do with, ideas mattered, and they were taken so seriously that they were the causes of some of the bloodiest wars in Christian history.
The ones which come to memory, are the wars between Christians and Muslims, which lasted from around the seventh century, all the way to about the sixteenth century, and the Albigensian Crusade, which was between Christians and heretical gnostics called Albigensians or Cathars, and which lasted from 1209 to 1229.
Christians fighting Muslims in Spain
Both of these wars were done over theological ideas, with one sect triumphing over the other. Islam was founded on various anti-Christian tenets, and the Muslims assumed, as the Mormons do, the facade of being true believers in Jesus Christ.
Muhammad the heresiarch
Though Islam technically was founded in 622 AD, we can affirm that Christianity is inherently averse toward the tenets of Islam, while Islam is innately a Christian heresy with beliefs deliberately against the very foundations of the Church’s orthodoxy.
Islamic doctrine states that God is not our Father, and that Christ is not His Son. This is openly conveyed in Surah 19, in which it reads:
It is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glory be to Him! when He determines a matter, He only says to it, “Be”, and it is. Verily Allah is my Lord and your Lord: therefore serve Him; this is the Straight Way. (Surah 19:35-36)
It is here where Islam is not only going directly against the belief in the Father and the Son, but fitting the criteria of antichrist, as St. John declared:
Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. (I John 2:22)
Islam teaches that Christ was never killed nor crucified, but that He only appeared to be crucified, and that He ascended to heaven. The Koran writes:
Because they rejected Faith; that they uttered against Mary a grievous false charge; That they said (in boast), “We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah”, but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, certainly they killed him not. No, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, the Wise. (Surah 4)
The denial of the crucifixion comes as a result of hatred for the cross of Christ, and St. Paul, when writing to the Philippians, warned against such heresies in the advent of Christianity:
Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample.(For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) (Philippians 3:17-19)
This Muslim belief, that Christ only appeared to be crucified, existed long before Muhammad, and can be traced explicitly to the Apostolic age, in which St. Ignatius (a student of St. John, St. Peter and St. Paul, who was commissioned by the Apostles to be bishop of Antioch) warned against it as evil and dangerous in his epistle to the Trallians:
But if as some who are atheists — that is to say, infidels — pretend that he [Christ] only seemed to suffer, (they themselves only seeming to exist,) why then am I bound? why do I deserve to fight with beasts? Therefore do I die in vain: therefore I will not speak falsely against the Lord. Flee, therefore, these evil sprouts which bring forth deadly fruit, of which if any one taste, he shall presently die. (Epistle to the Tallians, 10-11, trans. Archbishop Wake)
St. Ignatius being fed to the lions for fighting against the pagans
Take notice that none of these ancient Christian writers expressed toleration toward these wicked doctrines, which is quite contrary to how the modern church establishment today is taking a stance toward false religions. But the modern may ask, “what is the big deal if someone does not believe that Christ was not crucified, or if He is not a son and God not his father?”
The answer to this question is the Nairobi mall massacre, nay, 9/11, the Armenian Genocide, and a myriad of other inhumanities orchestrated by the Muslims.
The animosity between Christianity and Islam did not just arise with Muhammad, but is an inevitable result of the Church battling with various heresies which came before, had numerous agreements with, and were adopted by, the cult of Islam. The war between Christianity and Islam is merely a continuation of the Church’s struggle with various heresies, which existed from the time of the Apostles, that Islam consists of.
Christians and Muslims fighting
For example, the great Muslim leader Akbah expressed this militant Unitarianism when he spoke of his desire to go
to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy [Allah’s] holy name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any other gods than thee. (1)
The “unity” here mentioned refers to the anti-Trinitarian nature of Allah, while the “rebellious nations” and “gods” allude to the countries of Christendom and the Godhead–that is, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
The contention between Islam’s heretical doctrine and Christianity’s orthodoxy, is what provoked the innumerable wars between Muslim and Christian, with the Muslims being the initial aggressors.
Christian warriors
Why were the Christians in Western Europe so enthusiastic and willing to go out of their way to fight against Muslims? Because in Christianity, ideas matter. It mattered both to the hermit, the scholar, the priest, and the knight, that a great horde of heretics, preaching blasphemies against Christ and His cross, trampled over the Holy Land which God Himself blessed and walked upon.
Modernly minded people cannot wrap their minds around this quite sublime way of thinking, because in reality, they have no zeal for the Faith, and to them, ideas have equal footing.
So would we condemn these Christians for valiantly subduing kingdoms, and fighting militarily the armies of false religions? How could we then disregard the words of St. Paul:
And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. (Hebrews 11:32-34)
The New Testament never severed itself with the Old, but continues the quest to crush tyrannies and the very falsehoods which build them up. But of course we have John Piper, who wrote that Christians should:
Admit that the Christian church has often been too entangled with civil governments, with the result that violence has been endorsed by the church as a way of accomplishing religious, and not just civil, goals. The Crusades, for example, stand as a monument to collective Christian blindness to the teaching of Jesus. …Make clear that the use of God-sanctioned violence between Israel and the nations in the Old Testament is no longer God’s will for his people.
Should the Christians have then allowed the Muslims to have overrun the Holy Land and Christendom, and ignore the verse of St. Paul where militaristic stories are given to us as models of Faith?
The old Christians fought because to them, error had no right. There was almost no concept of religious liberty in old Christendom. And let us not forget that Joshua’s crusade in fighting and vanquishing the heathens of Canaan, was done as a battle between truth and evil ideas. This was made quite clear by Moses when he proclaimed:
Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess the land: but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord doth drive them out from before thee. (Deuteronomy 9:4)
Medieval depiction of Joshua leading the assault against Jericho
In fact, it was from the Torah, and the inspired writings of the prophets, that the Crusaders received their inspiration and Biblical obligation to fight and end false religion. And while this may shock or disturb modern Christians, we must remember that the modern concept of religious equality is non-existant in the Scriptures.
Just to give one example, under a biblical government, the worship of the sun, moon, or any other luminary, is punishable by death, as read in the Torah:
If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the Lord thy God, in transgressing his covenant, And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel: Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die. (Deuteronomy 17:2-5)
Medieval depiction of Moses seeing the heretical Hebrews worshipping the golden calf
When reading this verse, the pertinent question is why were these types of laws enacted? Because, if sun-worship was not suppressed and stopped, then Israel would have become a pagan tyranny, in which the worshippers of God would be killed, and humans sacrificed for the rituals of the sun-god. One does not need to go any further than pagan Mexico, to comprehend that sun-worship leads to purely cruel and violent despotism.
If you were to travel back in time and meet with, lets say, Pope Urban II (the one who commenced the First Crusade), or Hernando Cortez (conquerer of pagan Mexico) and tell them all religions need to have equal status, they would have glared at you as though you were a madman or from a different planet.
Pope Urban II commencing the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont
Hernando Cortes
I will give just two examples to show the stance these men took against false religions. For Hernando Cortes, here is a quote from Francisco Lopez de Gomara, an official biographer of his:
During the first days after the arrival of the Spaniards, whenever Moctezuma went to the temple, men were killed in sacrifice. To prevent this cruelty in the presence of the Spaniards who now had to escort him, Cortes admonished Moctezuma to order the priests not to sacrifice a human body, unless he wanted Cortes to lay waste the temple and the city. Cortes even told Moctezume that he desired to cast down the idols in his presence and before all the people. …The first time that Moctezuma went to the temple after his arrest, Cortes and the Spaniards went with him and, as soon as they entered, Cortes on one side and they on the other, began to cast down the idols from their pedestals and altars in the chapels and chambers. (2)
Pope Urban II, in his speech that commenced the First Crusade, praised Jerusalem and the land of Israel, called for battle against the Muslims to purge the Holy Land from paganism, and compared the Christian armies to those of Moses fighting the pagan Amalekites:
Of holy Jerusalem, brethren, we dare not speak, for we are exceedingly afraid and ashamed to speak of it. This very city, in which, as you all know, Christ Himself suffered for us, because our sins demanded it, has been reduced to the pollution of paganism and, I say it to our disgrace, withdrawn from the service of God. Who now serves the church of the Blessed Mary in the valley of Josaphat, in which church she herself was buried in body? But why do we pass over the Temple of Solomon, nay of the Lord, in which the barbarous nations placed their idols contrary to law, human and divine? …With Moses, we shall extend unwearied hands in prayer to Heaven, while you go forth and brandish the sword, like dauntless warriors, against Amalek. (3)
I would be willing to dispute that religious equality would have been combated with more enthusiasm and zeal by the ancient Christians, than the Christians today who are rightfully going against sodomite marriage. The idea was unthinkable.
Christianity, the only path to salvation, equal with Islam or any other false religion? The very thought was iconicievable to the Church, until recent times.
For the sake of clarification, I am not speaking of one Christian denomination tyrannizing another, I wish to see peace between orthodox Protestant sects and orthodox Catholics, just as Chris wanted peace between the Jews and the Samaritans. I am speaking of false and antichrist religions.
Because of our indifference to ideas, we have allowed Muslims, pagan environmentalists, fanatical socialists, Mormons (like Harry Reid), and other heretics, to infiltrate the government, because of religious equality. I would be willing to argue, that Obama’s presidency is an outcome of religious equality.
I can hear the arguments already, “Mormons are the nicest people in the world, Mormonism is a peaceful religion.” Many Mormons are peaceful, yes, not because of Mormonism. The early Mormons were very violent, one can only read about the Mountain Meadow Massacre, and Joseph Smith’s Alcoran (the Koran) or the Sword speech to understand this. It was not until the Mormons received intolerance from the US government, with the Mormon Extermination Order, and local American militias, that they became peaceful.
Peaceful Mormons are a result of intolerance toward their violent predecessors.
When Keith Ellison, a Muslim who became a congressman, refused to swear an oath over the Bible, and demanded that a Koran replace the Scriptures instead, and he, in turn, was given this right, this too is an indication that the place of Christianity has been put on equal footing with error, and the concern for ideas, is on the verge of death.
Dennis Prager reflected this indifferentism when he, in regards to this issue, said that Ellison should swear upon the Bible and a Koran, as though Truth can mix with falsehood:
All I am asking is that Keith Ellison bring a Bible along, I’m not asking him not to bring the Koran
If the Christians in those days had the mindset that most have today, they would have written down a policy tolerating all faiths as equals, and the Muslims, as a result of no Christian zeal, would have had a significant advantage militarily, and would have gained much ground over Christendom.
It is because of the old Christian zealots, who rejected religious equality, that Islam, and other dangerous religions, were hindered for centuries from accomplishing the universal conquests that they desired to do.
Godfrey of Bouillon, fighter of Muslims
The great expanse of the Islamic Ottoman empire, starting from the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmet II, can be substantially attributed to the lack of crusading spirit, and thus the fading away of concern over ideas, which gradually took Europe.
Mehmet ii, Muslim heretic who conquered Christian Constantinople
The concept of religious equality did not arise to a majorly and more widespread point until the modern era, specifically in the times of the so-called Enlightenment period of the 18th century, in greater part due to the four horsemen of religious toleration, Diderot, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, and Rousseau.
Let us examine the statements and diatribes in regards to each one of these men, and see if they themselves truly believed in religious toleration.
THE PIONEERS OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine is a figure favorited greatly by both liberals and conservatives, especially by Glenn Beck. He was a man who not only supported but heavily influenced the American Revolution with his book, Common Sense.
He was a staunch and ardent follower, and advancer, of Deism, or the belief that there is only one god, without any complex intricacies, such as the Trinity, and not defined by a standard and absolute system such as Christianity.
Paine stated numerous beliefs and epigrams which many of a modern and neutrally conservative persuasion would accept, such as his declaration of faith:
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist of doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creature happy. (4)
Paine believed that all people who worshipped one god, regardless of their religious faith, were deists:
Every person, of whatever religious denomination he may be, is a Deist in the first article of his creed. Deism, from the Latin word Deus, God, is the believe of a God, and this belief is the first article of every man’s creed. (5)
He expressed this same belief again in one letter he wrote:
There is, however, one point of union wherein all religions meet, and that is in the first article of every man’s creed, and of every nation’s creed, that has any creed at all, I believe in God. (6)
Similarly, Beck has a deistic view of God, he sees the nature of God as without Trinity, singular and separate from Christ, and (ironically) as subjective and definable to the worshipper. He expressed his deism in one speech:
This isn’t about one faith or one church over another, it is about the eternal principles of God. …Go to your churches, your synagogues, your mosques, anyone that is not preaching hate or division, anyone that is not teaching to kill another man, but you go to those that are teaching the lasting principles.
This way of perceiving God, as just an overly simple entity subject to the definitions of man, was reflected also in the allowing of Keith Ellison to swear upon the Koran, and not the Bible, since God can be whatever you make Him out to be, regardless of what book you look to learn of His nature and purpose.
The heresy of Deism is reminiscent to the heresy of Islam. Muhammad, like the Deists, took the Christians God and stripped of all His unique aspects, and simplified Him. Both the Muslims and the Deists reject the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the Incarnation, the belief that Christ is the Son of God, and a plethora of other orthodox tenets. To illustrate the heterodox of Deism, here is a statement of belief from Paine:
But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and another part called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits. (7)
Old Koran
Now compare this to the Quran:
People of the Book, do not go to excess in your religion, and do not say anything about God except the truth: the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was nothing more than a messenger of God, His word, directed to Mary, a spirit from Him. So believe in God and His messengers and do not speak of a ‘Trinity’—stop, that is better for you—God is only one God, He is far above having a son, everything in the heavens and earth belongs to Him and He is the best one to trust. (Sura 4)
It is appropriate to present the discernment and forewarning of St. James in the particular instilling of Deism, and the anti-Trinitarian “one God” of Muhammad, Paine, and Beck:
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. (James 2:19)
“But does Thomas Paine have to do with devils?” you might ask.
Paine’s doctrine was favorable to the diabolical, and his enmity toward the sacred and the holy was so thick and vociferous, that he gave open delight to demons over Christianity:
It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrines of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit amongst us. (7A)
As Deism and Islamism have their close similarities, they also have their greatest point of agreement, and that is the hatred for Christianity.
Paine’s elegant style, pithy maxims, and seeming piety and love for justice, has charmed and attracted many a reader. But after one peruses his other works, what we find is that his evocative writings masqueraded his vicious war against Christianity, which he, in a frothing tone, described as inferior to Deism, and to every religion that has come into existence:
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. …The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple Deism. It must have been the first, and will probably be the last that man believes. (8)
Samuel Adams
It is no wonder that the Founding Father, Samuel Adams, wrote to Paine surprised at his sacrilegious sentiments:
But when I heard you had turned your mind to a defense of infidelity, I felt myself astonished (9)
Paine wrote back to Adams, and went so far as to blame the violence of the Muslim Barbary pirates, with whom America warred with, on the Christian Crusades of the Middle Ages, and thus on Christianity itself:
Even the depredation on your commerce by the Barbary powers, sprang from the crusades of the church against those powers. (10)
His dissimulating goals behind supporting the American Revolution, was to use America as a platform to conduct a revolution for the cause of his own religion, that is, Deism. He made this intention clear in his book, The Age of Reason:
Soon after I had published the pamphlet, ‘Common Sense,’ in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. …Human inventions and priest-craft would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more. (11)
He believed that Deism would put an end to the supposed tyranny which Christianity caused over the centuries, since he was sure that his heresy was incompatible for the purpose of despotism:
But pure and simple Deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments. (12)
But while this statement has a sense of piousness and innocent civility, it is not absent of hypocrisy. As he hailed toleration, he praised the French Revolution for its violently intolerant abolishment of the Catholic Church:
In countries under despotic governments, where inquiry is always forbidden, the people are condemned to believe as they have been taught by their priests. This was for many centuries the case in France: but this link in the chain of slavery, is happily broken by the revolution; and, that it may never be rivetted again, let us employ a part of the liberty we enjoy scrutinizing into the truth. (13)
As he gave his strong support for religious equality, he pushed for the belief that even the Catholic churches in France should be the equal property of the people and sold, and the money used to support the poor. It was socialism before Karl Marx, except it came from Deism and not the atheism of Communism. As Paine wrote:
The [French] constitution protects equally, at it ought to do, every profession of religion; it gives no exclusive privilege to any. The churches are the common property of all the people; they are the national goods, and cannot be given exclusively to any profession, because the right does not exist of giving to any that which appertains to all. It would be consistent with right that the churches be sold, and the money arising therefrom be invested as a fund for the education of children or poor parents of every profession, and, if more than sufficient for this purpose, that the surplus be appropriated to the support of the aged poor. (14)
Vladmir Lenin
This tyrannical envisioning has all the elements of a communist utopia, for it was Vladimir Lenin who had the church property in Russia stolen for the good of the collective populace. After the Bolsheviks took over Russia, Lenin stole all of the land owned by the nobility and the church, and gave it to the have-nots. The land was stolen “for the benefit of the community” and was “to be distributed in equal shares.”
Judas betraying Christ with a kiss
Alas! This is the wicked spirit of Judas, which masks itself as a defender of the poor with the goal of thievery. For St. John wrote:
Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. (John 12:3-6)
Similarly to the deistic religion of Islam, when the Muslims conquered Spain they took over Christian lands and destroyed their churches. Church property became under the control of the Ummah and thus Christians were forced to comply with the Pact of Umar that guaranteed the Islamic enforcement over Christian lands. In the document it reads:
We shall not build, in our cities or in their neighborhood, new monasteries, Churches, convents, or monks’ cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims.
Thomas Paine, though he is admired and promoted by Beck, is the antithesis to the values subscribed to by conservatives in America. Paine also accepted the French revolutionaries’ policy for the outlawing of church bells, as he wrote:
As to the bells, they are a public nuisance. …But if we permit ourselves to think of the sick, and the many sleepless nights and days they undergo, we shall feel the impropriety of increasing their distress by the noise of the bells, or any other noisy instruments. Quiet and private domestic devotion neither offends nor incommodes anybody; and the constitution has wisely guarded against the use of externals. Bells come under this description, and public processions still more so — Streets and highways are for the accommodation of persons following their several occupations, and no sectary has a right to incommode them — If any one has, every other has the same; and the meeting of various and contradictory processions would be tumultuous. Those who formed the constitution had wisely reflected upon these cases; and, whilst they were careful to reserve the equal right of every one, they restrained every one from giving offence, or incommoding another. (15)
His sentiments on the church bells is all too reminiscent to Stalinism and Islamism.
The young Joseph Stalin
In Stalin’s Russia, October 1929, the seizure of all church bells was ordered because “the sound of bells disturbs the right to peace of the vast majority of atheists in the towns and the countryside.”
Al-Ghazali
The Islamic philosopher Al-Ghazalli, wrote:
They [the Christians] are not permitted to ostentatiously display their wine or church bells
Beck is supporting Paine, a man who does not believe in the right to ownership, an individual freedom which every conservative upholds.
Paine gives the impression that he believed that all people should have the liberty to observe their religion, just as long as it does harm another person, and that he was not concerned what people do in their private lives. But, he wanted to tyrannically force Christians to keep their Faith privately.
In the intensity of the oppressive revolutionary mob in France, Thomas Paine called for the establishment of a deistic system of jurisprudence and education, being reminiscent of Islam’s sharia, that would prevent Catholicism from ever rooting itself again into the position it had for centuries in France’s government infrastructure and civilization, and to present the world with an example of extinguishing Christianity from the nation:
Let us devise means to establish schools of instruction, that we may banish the ignorance that the ancient regime of kings and priests had spread among the people. –Let us cultivate justice and benevolence, that the God of our fathers may bless us. The helpless infant and the aged poor cry to us to remember them — Let not wretchedness be seen in our streets — Let France exhibit to the world the glorious example of expelling ignorance and misery together. (16)
DIDEROT
Diderot
Diderot expressed, with much passion, the importance of religious toleration, and the detrimental consequences of religious intoleration. But their two sides to the coin of Diderot’s agenda, for while he exuberantly trumped religious tolerance and equality, he did not have the same sentiments when it came to the doctrine of monarchy, nor Christianity.
Diderot wrote:
It is impious to expose religion to the odious imputations of tyranny, of callousness, of injustice, of unsociability, even with the aim of drawing back to the fold those who would unfortunately have strayed from it. (17)
But, he as well wrote ideas favorable to tolerance toward Islam, and expressing violent animosity toward intolerant Christians:
If your truth proscribes me, then my error, which I take for the truth, will proscribe you. Cease to be violent, or cease to reproach the pagans and Muslims for being violent. (18)
This statement not only reveals his sympathies toward islam, but it also shows just how far back into history Islam has received the favor of heretics. Diderot exposed his true violent intentions toward the Church, when he would declare, in fits and bouts of rage:
Ah! when then shall I see the last king, strangled with the bowels of the last priest! (19)
VOLTAIRE
Voltaire
Voltaire focused so much religious toleration that he wrote an entire book entitled, A Treatise on Toleration, in which he, being a deist, wrote a prayer to a universal god who is worshipped by all people of all faiths:
And if the scourge of war is not to be avoided, let us not mutually hate and destroy each other in the midst of peace; but rather make us of the few moments of our existence to join in praising, in a thousand different languages, from one extremity of the world to the other, Thy goodness, O all-merciful Creator, to whom we are indebted for the existence. (20)
Voltaire’s Treatise on Tolerance
In his Essay on Universal History, the Manners, and Spirit of Nations, Voltaire wrote some of his fancies for Allah because of his deistic attributes, that he was transcendent and singular:
He [Muhammad] taught the Arabians who paid their adorations to the stars, that they ought only to adore the God who created the stars; that the books of the Jews and Christians being corrupted and interpolated, ought to be held in abhorrence … Among the incoherent declamations with which this book [the Koran], according to eastern taste, is filled; there are passages that appear truly sublime. …His [Muhammad’s] definition of God is expressed in a manner still more sublime (21)
Voltaire’ Essay on Universal History, the Manners, and Spirit of Nations
But, do not let his expressions of feigned piety and universal love, nor his gentle countenance, charm and beguile you as the serpent did to the woman in the garden, for within his fruit, which is pleasant to the eyes, is a poisonous substance ready to seize the soul with tares rooted in the abyss.
In his book on toleration, Voltaire praises, and posits excuses for, intoleration. He wrote that Nero’s persecution of the Christians, in which he executed St. Paul and St. Peter, for their refusal to worship him and his gods, had nothing to do with religion, but punishment for their burning of Rome (which was a false accusation):
Nero is said to have been a great persecutor of the Christians. But Tacitus tells us that they were accused of having set fire to the city of Rome, and were thereupon given up to the resentment of the population. But had religion anything to do with this charge? No, certainly. (22)
In the same same book, he justifies, and gives his applause to, the emperor of China, Yong-T-Chin, for intolerantly driving out Jesuit priests from his country:
It is true that the great Yong-T-Chin, the most wise and magnanimous of all the emperors of China, drove the Jesuits out of his kingdom; but this was not because that himself was non-tolerance, but, on the contrary, because the Jesuits were so. …[W]e must confess him to be the wisest and most clement of all princes. How could he indeed, with any consistency, keep in his kingdom European philosophers, who, under the pretence of teaching the use of thermometers and eolipiles, had found means to debauch a prince of the blood? …It was sufficient for him to be informed of the outrageous and indecent disputes between these Jesuits, Dominicans, Capuchins, and secular priests who were sent as missionaries into his dominions from one extremity of the globe to preach the truth; instead of which they employed their time in mutually pronouncing damnation against one another. The emperor, then, did no more than send away a set of foreigners who were disturbers of the public peace. (23)
Voltaire desired to destroy Christianity under the mask of, and through, religious toleration. For if all religious are considered equal, then one cult has the liberty to dominate the rest, and use the state, or mobs, to persecute the Church.
Rousseau
Rousseau, out of all the promoters of religious toleration, was probably the most honest when describing his schemes, and the most violent.
Like Paine, Voltaire, and Diderot, Rousseau was a Deist, and he made a seeming appearance to the idol of toleration, condemning the supposed warlike side of Christianity as “the most violent of earthly despotisms.” (24)
As a deist, Rousseau was more inclined to favor other religions over Christianity, specifically Islam, for he wrote in his book, The Social Contract, of his admiration for the Islamic system of government, or sharia law:
Mahomet held very sane views, and linked his political system well well together; and as long as the form of his government continued under the caliphs who succeeded him, that government was indeed one, and so far good. (25)
Rousseau’s Social Contract
While both the religion of Rousseau and Muhammad were both deistic, they at the same time strived to establish their own philosophical utopias, in which ideas contrary to their own ideologies are limited and extinguished, and they both saw Christianity as their main enemy.
Rousseau considered Christianity as the biggest obstacle to his utopian vision, writing:
Nay, more, so far from binding the hearts of the citizens to the State, it [Christianity] has the effect of taking them away from all earthly things. I know of nothing more contrary to the social spirit. (26)
Since Christianity was contrary to his social contract, Rousseau wanted a political system established, in which people’s beliefs are checked and examined to see if they obligate one to be loyal to the collective community, and this would determine if they are worthy of freedom or not:
The right which the social compact gives the Sovereign over the subjects does not, we have seen, exceed the limits of public expediency. The subjects then owe the Sovereign an account of their opinions only to such an extent as they matter to the community. Now, it matters very much to the community that each citizen should have a religion. That will make him love his duty; but the dogmas of that religion concern the State and its members only so far as they have reference to morality and to the duties which he who professes them is bound to do to others. (27)
Now, Rousseau is careful to add in his enlightenment spirit of toleration, and makes sure to say that his ideal state would not force anyone to accept his state religion of deism, but he does write that anyone who refuses his social contract and his universal cult of the one god, should be punished, and specifies Catholics, or those who say that “Outside the Church is no salvation,” as the ones deserving oppression:
There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject. While it can compel no one to believe them, it can banish from the State whoever does not believe them–it can banish him, not from impiety, but as an anti-social being, incapable of truly loving the laws and justice, and of sacrificing, at need, his life to his duty. If anyone, after publicly recognizing these dogmas, behaves as if he does not believe them, let him be punished by death: he has committed the worst of all crimes, that of lying before the law. …The existence of a mighty, intelligent, and beneficent divinity, possessed of foresight and providence, the life to come, the happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the social contract and the law: these are its positive dogmas. …Now that there is and can be no longer an exclusive national religion, tolerance should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of citizenship.But whoever dares to say: ‘Outside the Church is no salvation,’ ought to be driven from the State (28)
What difference is there between the ideas of these men, and the sharia code of Muslims? Nothing. Both lead to the oppression of Christians.
THE ULTIMATE RESULT OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT’S BELIEF IN RELIGIOUS TOLERATION
What was the consequence of these thinkers? Bloodshed. The deistic ideas which these philosophers propagated led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people for their faith. Those who screamed for toleration, used their liberties to cease all toleration toward Christianity.
French Revolution beheading
To give a major illustration as to how cruel the deists were in the French Revolution, in the city of Nantes, the sadistic revolutionary commander Jean-Baptiste Carrier disposed of Christian Vendéean prisoners-of-war in a horrifically efficient form of Islamic style mass execution. In the Noyades there was mass drowning when naked men, women, and children were tied together in specially constructed boats, towed out to the middle of the river Loire and then sunk.
Drowning Christians
Historians believe that around 170,000 Vendéeans were killed, around 5,000 in the Noyades. When it was over, French General Francois Joseph Westermann penned a letter to the Committee of Public Safety stating: “There is no more Vendée… According to the orders that you gave me, I crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated all.”
Butcherer of Christians, Francois Joseph Westermann
Some men have adored absolute equality, to the point that they would punish and kill those who do not.
The massacres of the revolution precipitated an immense impact on the people of France, especially the conservatives who, like the ones of America, wanted to preserve Christianity and biblical values. These people are known as the anti-Enligtenment thinkers, one of the most learned of whom was Joseph de Maistre.
Joseph de Maistre
De Maistre is one of the most elegant and zealous of the conservative writers, and because of all the violence and butcherings he witnessed, he was, understandably, so averse and resentful of deism and the enlightenment, that he wished that there was some sort of system in the government which could have prevented the spread of enlightenment philosophy, and in turn, would have stopped the violent revolution from ever happening.
With all of this horrid history and these deceptive philosophies, I am reminded of the words of De Maistre, written with anguished spirit on what evil men took his country:
What folly it was to grant everyone freedom of speech! This is what has ruined us. The so-called philosophers have all a certain fierce and rebellious pride which does not compromise with anything; they detest without exception every distinction they do not enjoy; they find fault in every authority; they hate anything above them. If they are allowed, they will attack everything, even God, because He is master. See if it is not the same men who have attacked both kings and the God Who established them. (29)
The violence of the deists of the French Revolution will be exceeded by the coming holocausts of the deist Muslims, and they will occur only in a land where religious equality is exalted, and they will never occur in a nation where Christianity is the religion of the land, and is superior to the evils of falsehood and demonic philosophers.
The prospect of tyranny provokes men of prudent thought to conclude that the dangerous beliefs and ideas, which will give rise to their oppressors, need to be prevented from planting their seeds into the souls of the nation, by a system of religious inequality.
In a nation where all ideas are equal, one of them will eventually rule over the others. What then is liberty for? It is for the saints to worship God, and observe His laws, without fear from the despotism of heretics. Christians must be ready to fight in this eternal war between truth and error. The dual is to the death.
(1) *In Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. v, ch. l, p. 953, brackets mine*
(2) *Francisco Lopez de Gomara, Cortes, ch. 85, trans. Lesley Byrd Simpson*
(3) *Urban II, Council of Clermont, The Version of Baldric of Dol, in Edward Peters, The First Crusade*
(4) *All of Paine’s works quoted here, is taken from The Theological Works of Thomas Paine, Chicago and New York: Belford, Clarke & Co, 1885, Paine, The Age of Reason, first part, p. 5*
(5) *Paine, Of the Religion of Deism*
(6) *Paine, Letter to Samuel Adams*
(7) *Paine, The Age of Reason, second part, p. 150*
(7A) *Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, conclusion, p. 145*
(8) *Pain, The Age of Reason, second part, p. 150*
(9) *Quoted by Paine, Letter to Samuel Adams*
(10) *Paine, Letter to Samuel Adams*
(11) *Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, first part, p. 6*
(12) *Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, second part, p. 150*
(13) *Thomas Paine, Letter to Camille Jordan*
(14) *Thomas Paine, Letter to Camille Jordan*
(15) *Thomas Paine, Letter to Camille Jordan*
(16) *Paine, Letter to Camile Jordan*
(17) *Diderot, Encyclopedie, article on “Intolerénce,” in Political Writings, ed. John Hope Mason and Robert Wokler*
(18) *Diderot, Encyclopedie, article on “Intolerénce,” in Political Writings, ed. John Hope Mason and Robert Wokler*
(19) *Abbe Barruel, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobonism, ch. v, p. 99*
(20) *Voltaire, An Address to the Deity, ch. 23, trans. William F. Flemming, ed. John R. Iverson*
(21)*Voltaire, An Essay on Universal History, the Manners, and Spirit of Nations, ch. iv, pp. 43, 45, trans. Nugent, ellipses and brackets mine*
(22) *Voltaire, A Treatise on Toleration, ch. 8, p. 36*
(23) *Voltaire, A Treatise on Tolerance, ch. 4, p. 21, brackets and ellipses mine*
(24) *Rousseau, Social Contract, book 4, ch. 8, p. 139, trans. G.D.H. Cole*
(25)*Rousseau, The Social Contract, book 4, ch. 8, p. 139*
(26) *Rousseau, The Social Contract, book 4, ch. 8*
(27) *Rousseau, Social Contract, book 4, ch. 8, p. 144*
(28) *Rousseau, Social Contract, book 4, ch. 8, pp. 144-145*
(29) *De Maistre, The Saint Petersburg Dialogue, eight dialogue, p. 269*
As those of you who read my material know, I have written several articles against the cult of Glenn Beck, and also the cult of secular conservatism. I received this comment from a reader, and found it very refreshing:
Prior to reading Therodore’s articles I was a subscriber to GBTV. I wanted to know what Glenn had to say about those who were calling the shots in our nation. Glenn exposed the communists and those connected to the web of lies. BUT, I also knew in the back of my mind that I VERY much disagreed with his biblical theology. After reading Theodore’s articles I had to make a decision. Do I support GBTV for the sake of America or do I choose to support Christ and the truth of the bible? I can no longer, in good conscience, give financial support to GBTV no matter what amount of good for the secular is accomplished. I can no longer justify jeopardizing the souls of the unsuspecting that will hear the heresy of universalism.
I wish more and more people would place Christianity over Beck and the borderline Mormon cult following that surrounds him.
I remember reading a story on a certain professor in Michigan who went on a violent tirade, stripped completely naked, and began vociferously blaspheming God. One witness said
“Half way through class, he started screaming at us — swearing left and right. He then started slamming his hands on the window and pressing his face against it, still screaming. Eventually he walked out and down the hallway to the end, all the while screaming.”
He then began screaming
“There is no (expletive) God!”
Now, I am sure that this professor is a fan of Friedrich Nietzsche, and takes delight in perusing books such as “The Antichrist” in which Nietzsche wrote:
It would be an error, however, to assume that there was any lack of understanding in the leaders of the Christian movement:—ah, but they were clever, clever to the point of holiness, these fathers of the church! What they lacked was something quite different. Nature neglected—perhaps forgot—to give them even the most modest endowment of respectable, of upright, of cleanly instincts…. Between ourselves, they are not even men…. If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men….
I guarantee that the heretic professor is adverse to the Catholic Church, and would find absolute pleasure in reading Nietzsche when he , in expressing his vitriolic contempt for the Catholic Church, praised the heretical king Friedrich II for siding with the Muslims in the 13th century in his hatred toward Christianity:
“War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!”: this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II. What! must a German first be a genius, a free spirit, before he can feel decently? I can’t make out how a German could ever feel Christian.
I remember, when I I was in high school, seeing numerous Nietzsche books in the school library. What did I do with them? I dumped them into the trash and broke the rules. I have no tolerance for evil, and neither should any true Christian.
When I read this story of the possessed professor, I cannot help but question as to why these antichrist philosophies are even allowed to be taught, learned, and propagated, in a civilized society.
The toleration for evil, violent, and heretical philosophies, is a sign that a civilization is crumbling, and is losing its status as a civilization.
Both the al-Shabaab terrorists, and the Obama family, want the nation of Kenya to be under Sharia code.
Al-Arab wrote that Obama’s cousin, Musa Obama, “studied Sharia in Medina”, called “upon the Arab and Islamic states to put more effort toward aiding the Kenyan Muslim brethren, especially since there is much support coming from Western nations and Western churches,” said that his organization, the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation, “gives scholarships to study Sharia in Medina [Saudi Arabia].”
He also stated “that despite the fact that Barack Obama hasn’t visited his tribe in Kenya since his election in the United States, there is a continual communication between him and several members of his family and his tribe in Kenya, of which the Kenyan prime minister is also a member.”
So, we know for a fact that Musa Obama studied Sharia in Medina, that his organization gives scholarships for Muslim youths to study Sharia in Saudi Arabia, for the purpose of dechristinizing and extinguishing Christianity in Kenya where the majority of people are Christians. Musa Obama, Sarah Obama (Obama’s grandmother) and Sayed Obama (Obama’s uncle) are lending scholarships for youths to enter the three major Sharia schools in Saudi Arabia, Umm al-Qura, the Islamic University in Medina, and the University of Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.
Now, we have al-Shabaab terrorists executing a slaughter of people in a Nairobi mall, and when we look into what this group is, what we find is that they are a result of youths being sent to these very same universities in Saudi Arabia, including the one where Musa Obama studied.
In the sixties and seventies, the major conduit of wahabism into Somalia, was the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood bringing in Islamic schools into Somalia. Somalian youths were then given scholarships for three major Islamic universities, Umm al-qura University, the University of Medina, and Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University, all three of these institutions are the same schools to where the Mama Obama Sara Fund is sending Kenyan youths to learn Sharia.
The Gulf Issues Centre For Strategic Studiesdescribes these institutions as “the spring of Wahhabism”, and further writes:
[Wahhabists] grew up in the Wahhabi and Salafi schools which imbibed radical ideas in the Islamic University in Medina, Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah, and the University of Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.
A 2010 African Policy Briefing for the International Crisis Group, in writing on the history of wahhabism and the al-Shabab group in Somalia, places its significant growth with Somalian youths being recruited into Umm al-Qura University and the University of Medina, the same schools to which the Mama Sarah Obama Fund brings Kenyan youths to study Islamic Sharia:
Saudi Arabia – flush with petro-dollars after the oil shocks of the 1970s – was particularly instrumental in promoting Wahhabism. and Islamic charities sprang up in all the major urban centres and even in the remote countryside. Well-funded madrasas (religious schools) Thousands of Somali youngsters were brought to Saudi universities – principally Medina and Umm al-Qura – to study Wahhabi jurisprudence (fiqh) and missionary work (da’wa).
The two named universities are the ones which the Obamas are heavily associated with. Moreover, Obama’s brother, Malik Obama, is the executive secretary for the Islamic Da’wa Organization of Sudan, which is working to make Africa Islamic, the same goal of the two named universities’ da’wa programs.
The Foreign Policy Council attributed the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Somalia substantially to these same three universities:
After Somalia’s independence in 1960, Egyptians opened secondary schools in many of the country’s towns. In the 1960s and 1970s, Saudi religious and educational institutions—especially the Islamic University of Medina, the Umm al-Qura University in Mecca, and the Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh—joined al-Azhar in offering scholarships to the graduates of these institutions. This development has parallels with the entrenchment of radical Islam in nearby Sudan via the establishment of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, the precursor to the currently-ruling National Congress Party (formerly the National Islamic Front).
This goal to replace Christianity with Islam in Kenya by the Obamas, was expressed by al-Arab in their interview with Musa Obama in the World University Ruff in Nairobi:
Muslims [in Kenya] suffer from the monumental Christianization aided by Zionist expansionism that infiltrates the nation.
Al-Shabaab, as well, wants to purge Kenya of all Christianity. When they were slaughtering people in the Nairobi mall, they lined civilians up, and executed them after deeming them non-Muslims because they could not “name the Prophet Mohammed’s mother or recite passages from the Koran”. There was one man who was Muslim who was spared after he recited some verses of the Koran.
Lets not forget that Kenya is 83% Christian, so we know that this massacre was done specifically to kill Christians. In 2011 it was reported that al-Shabaab decapitated a Christian in Somalia named Juma Nuradin Kamil.
But no matter, the world cares more for sodomites in Russia than Christians being massacred.
There is a very significant figure in the Nairobi mall shooting, Hassan Mahad Omar, also known as Hassaan Hussein Adam “Abu Salman.” Hassan is the unofficial mufti and ideologue for al-Shabaab, and their terrorist attacks are linked, directly and indirectly, to his fatwas.
Hassan teaches Islamic doctrine and has a degree from an Islamic university in Saudi Arabia, which means that he is interlinked with the three major Islamic universities to where the Obamas are sending Islamic youths to study Islam and Sharia.
Al-Shabaab, the group who slaughtered the people in the Christian majority nation of Kenya, and the Obamas, are associated with the universities which gave rise to the ideology of al-Shabaab, and both are striving for the same goal: an Islamic Kenya where Christianity would be outlawed.
Is it any wonder, now, that Obama prevented the revolution against the Muslim Brotherhood dictator of North Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, and that he is giving weapons to the jihadists in Syria?
Don’t get me wrong, some of the best Christians I know are Americans, and some of the best supporters of our Rescue Christians organization, are Americans. With that said, I will show as to why I conclude that the US Constitution is not inspired by God.
Over these recent years I have heard frequently from conservatives (especially those of a secular persuasion) that the US Constitution is a divinely inspired document, as though God wrote it as He wrote the Ten Commandments.
This assertion is also a part of the popularly held pretension that America is an extension of ancient Israel.
One of the main propagators of these ideas, is Glenn Beck. He said that:
It is God’s finger that wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
To make his point, Beck use false historical narrative, which no historian would support, saying ideas in light of his assertion that America is an extension of Israel:
The Israelites, the lost ten tribes, started to scatter the other direction, they went to the coastlines, generally in the area where are pilgrims came from. Judah kept the Torah alive, those who were taken captive by the Assyrians(Caucasians) they started to populate the Western part of Europe. All of Western civilization is based on the laws of Israel.
It would be beyond any formidable historian, to even think of such a fantasy to be regarded as history. Many of his sycophants would benefit reading actual history: before Christianity came to England, the British were savage heathens, they did not have the Law of Moses; it was the priests, named Cedd and Chad, who first brought the Faith to the pagan Mercians, who lived in England; and Christianity first significantly permeated England when the pagan British king, Lucius, was baptized by Pope Eleutherus in 156 AD, many centuries before the Puritans were ever founded. (1)
Before the light of Christ arrived to England, there was no knowledge of the Law of Moses, there was however, the worship of planetary gods, such as Mercury.
It was from Christian England where the Puritans came, and therefore, as trite as this may sound, America is an extension of Protestant Britain, not Israel. Why anyone, with all of this rich history of the Church, would believe a Mormon who uses Mormon fairy tales, is beyond me.
And this leads me to my next, and primary, point.
While many conservatives in America may subscribe to this belief, that the American Constitution is divinely inspired, they must remember that this is prevalently a Mormon doctrine, not a Christian one. Thus why Beck keeps repeating it while claiming to be Christian. What he said correlates with the Book of Mormon when it states that the Israelites will come to America:
But behold, thus saith the Lord God: When the day cometh that they shall believe in me, that I am Christ, then have I covenanted with their fathers that they shall be restored in the flesh, upon the earth, unto the lands of their inheritance.
And it shall come to pass that they shall be gathered in from their long dispersion, from the isles of the sea, and from the four parts of the earth; and the nations of the Gentiles shall be great in the eyes of me, saith God, in carrying them forth to the lands of their inheritance. (2 Nephi 10:7-8)
In a stunt of pure replacement theology, Joseph Smith stole the Abrahamic Covenant and connivingly reverted it to America.
LDS president President J. Reuben Clark, mentioned the Constitution as “part of my religion,” and Mormon writer, Tim Ballard, on Glenn Beck’s radio show, said
“I believe these ancient prophets [of the Bible], knew of the promise land of America.”
He continued to say that
God led migrations out of Israel and that they — he led them to the promise land of America. This was another exodus of sorts…
Glenn Beck disrupted him to say that the early migrants to America
were completing the journey that Moses started…
Ballard continued on to say that his views on America are in agreement with Jonathan Khan’s book, The Harbinger, which has no historic grounds whatsoever:
…I don’t know if you’ve heard of a book called The Harbinger by Jonathan Khan…[it] says the exact same thing that I’m saying, the covenant has been extended from Israel, from ancient Israel, to America.
It is for this reason that Khan’s fallacious arguments are used by cultists.
The LDS book, Doctrine and Covenant, which Mormons believe to have been communicated to Joseph Smith through spiritual revelation, and which they blasphemously attribute to the mouth of God, exalts the Constitution as being divinely inspired, and says that God gave to it the belief of religious equality
According to the laws and constitution of the people, which I have suffered to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles;
That every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment.
Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another. And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood. (D&C 101:77-80)
The Constitution has great elements of human genius, but it is not divinely inspired, for within it lies the belief in religious equality and liberty, something which contradicts the Bible. Religious liberty or toleration, is not in the Bible, in the first five books of Moses, we have a myriad of examples of religious intolerance and inequality.
Jacob purging his household of false gods (Genesis 35:2-4), Moses’ killing of the golden calf worshippers (Exodus 32:27-28), the Levitical sentencing of capital punishment for anyone who conducts child sacrifice (Leviticus 20:2), God’s command to have hung anyone who worshipped Midianite deities, Phinehas’ slaying of those who worshipped Baal-peor (Numbers 25:4-8), and the injunction of Moses to execute sun and moon worshippers (Deuteronomy 17:2-7), is evidence enough for my point.
Now to be fair, I do not believe in being tyrannical to non-Christians. Numbers 15:14-15 states that foreigners must be treated as being equal before the law. But this does not mean equality of religions, in fact, it states that the stranger, before entering, must make a sacrifice to the Lord, which implies a policy of intolerance for false religion:
And if a stranger sojourn with you, or whosoever be among you in your generations, and will offer an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord; as ye do, so he shall do.
One ordinance shall be both for you of the congregation, and also for the stranger that sojourneth with you, an ordinance for ever in your generations: as ye are, so shall the stranger be before the Lord. (Numbers 15:14-15)
The very existence of religious intolerance in the Bible, proves that the Constitution cannot be inspired, since it trumps the idea of religious liberty. The notion that the Founding Fathers were inspired, is proven again incorrect, because they as well upheld the Enlightenment concept of religious toleration.
George Washington, when writing on employing workers for Mount Vernon, wrote that “If they be good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa, or Europe; they may be Mohammedans [Muslims], Jews, or Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists.”
By this very logic, a Muslim with the spirit of Jamal Malek Hassan (the Fort Hood shooter), or Keith Ellison (the Muslim who swore over the Koran and not the Bible), or an Atheist communist, like Engels or Marx, or Saul Alinsky, would be permitted to enter the United States, under the watch of Washington. In this regard, the Founders were not “wise men,” as the Book of Mormon affirms.
But the LDS, not surprisingly, are pushing for this dangerous idea of religious equality. Glenn Beck told a crowd to “go to your churches, your synagogues, your mosques,” I wonder where he got this from? It is in agreement with Dallin H. Oaks of the LDS, who said in a more recent speech:
The preservation of religious freedom in our nation depends on the value we attach to the teachings of right and wrong in our churches, synagogues, and mosques. It is faith in God, however defined, that translates these religious teachings into the moral behavior that benefits the nation.
“God, however defined,” is what enables evils. The Muslims redefined God, and look at what crimes they are committing for him. Our liberty does not depend on our tolerance, but our intolerance toward evil.
The belief in religious liberty, established by the Founding Fathers, is what has led to the infiltration of this nation by those of heretical beliefs. Clinton, Obama, Al Gore, all of these people are heretics. America is suffering because of heresy. Islam is a heresy, communism is a heresy, environmentalism is a heresy, the homosexual agenda is a heresy. And yet we still laude ourselves for our tolerance.
We act as though God made the world for America, that American Christianity is the apple of His eye, and that the Christians of the East are irrelevant in comparison to the Evangelicals of the U.S. The truth is that the Eastern Christians, such as those of Russia, Egypt, Syria, and Uganda, are exemplifying the Christian spirit more than anyone else.
The Russians are fighting against the sodomite agenda with full exertion, and while there are many good and holy Evangelicals, the Russian Church, justifiably, is weary of the American Evangelical mega church industry, permeating its country
I cannot blame them. Rick Warren, the pope of the American church, has said that “I have many, many gay friends, and have worked around the world with them in gay organizations to try to stop AIDS”.
This is absolutely unbiblical. Any “gay” organization is, inexorably, for the advancement of the sodomite worldview, and thus any so-called Christian who works with them is an enemy of the Church. The false preacher also affirmed, with much confidence and exuberance, that sodomites, if they accept Christ–and remain being sodomites–are “going to Heaven! Without a doubt.” Here is the video:
This is contrary to what Scripture says:
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. (I Corinthians 6:9, NKJV)
The Egyptians and the Syrians, who are all Orthodox or Catholic, are suffering immense persecution under the Islamic heretics. Why are the Evangelical, or the American Catholic, leaderships, so static in this holy fray against the evils of the Muslims and the Sodomites?
I pray that one day the Church will restore its old and rejected spirit, that of the Siege of Malta, the Conquest of Jerusalem, the Battle of Lepanto, and not this vacillating and devilish manner which it has adopted.
When God spoke of the Church after Christ, He prophesied on the Egyptian and other Orthodox churches, not the modernistic evangelicals today. Isaiah foretold of the Coptic Church in Egypt being persecuted by the Muslims and ultimately saved by Christ:
And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt: for they shall cry unto the LORD because of the oppressors, and he shall send them a savior, and a mighty one, and he shall deliver them. (Isaiah 19:20)
Malachi prophesied on the Orthodox Church when he proclaimed:
For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 1:11)
Tell me, which denomination today burns incense in church? The only ones are the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox, not Evangelicals or Protestants. God did not make prophecies on the American Constitution, and neither is that document inspired. Anyone who makes the Constitution scripture or holy writ, had made an idol of it. I am afraid that there is a cult of the Founding Fathers in America.
For the sake of our souls, let us read Scripture, and revere it; let us adhere to the Church Fathers, and not to the Founding Fathers.
Out of all the greatest figures in Christian history, one of the most misconstrued and slandered against is Constantine. They say that he founded the Catholic Church, and he bonded it with paganism mixed with Christianity, but is this true?
Constantine
This assertion has been being used to wrongly deceive countless Christians, and bring false information to Messianics and Evangelicals. It was first originated by anti-Christian writers, such as Franz Cumont.
Franz Cumont
What many don’t recognize is that Franz Cumont introduced this theory with an overall anti-Christian intention. He wrote that Christianity
took from its opponents their own weapons, and used them; the better elements of paganism were transferred to the new religion. (1)
With this said, we can agree that the beliefs which try to prove that Constantine configured his own church and mixed it with paganism, was originally produced by haters of the Faith, and has succeeded in causing further division in the Church, with Christians who hate Constantine going against those Christians who they perceive as subscribing to beliefs founded by Constantine. Such contention is founded on false historicity.
To refute the notion that Constantine invented a new church, and to show that the Church did not change after, or was supplanted by, Constantine, I will almost always use primary source accounts such as Eusebius, Tertullian, St. Ambrose, St. Irenaeus, Firmicus, St. Justin Martyr, and St. Augustine.
This is important because it shows that once we look to the original sources of the Church, and not anti-Christian writers or information from the internet, what we find is not Constantine repressing Christians, but heretics who would be rejected by both learned Protestant and Catholic scholars.
One of the most frequent accusations is that Constantine founded, or at least helped establish, an official church of the empire, and then began slaughtering Bible believing Christians who refused to conform, and forced them into an “underground” church.
The evidence presented for this persecution of these obscure believers is an edict of Constantine in which certain sects are listed as being heretical and banned from preaching or assembling religious meetings, it states:
Understand now, by this present statute, ye Novatians, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulians, ye who are called Cataphrygians, and all ye who devise and support heresies by means of your private assemblies, with what a tissue of falsehood and vanity, with what destructive and venomous errors, your doctrines are inseparably interwoven, so that through you the healthy soul is stricken with disease, and the living becomes the prey of everlasting death. Ye haters and enemies of truth and life, in league with destruction! All your counsels are opposed to the truth, but familiar with deeds of baseness, fit subjects for the fabulous follies of the stage. …We have directed, accordingly, that you be deprived of all the houses in which you are accustomed to hold your assemblies, and our care in this respect extends as far as to forbid the holding of your superstitious and senseless meetings, not in public merely, but in any private house or place whatsoever. Let those of you, therefore, who are desirous of embracing the true and pure religion, take the far better course of entering the Catholic Church, and uniting with it in holy fellowship, whereby you will be enabled to arrive at the knowledge of the truth. (2)
Now, I know that such fierce and overly zealous words may set alarms off in your heads. These poor believers are banned from preaching their theologies, and not only that, they are being coerced into joining the Catholic Church which, as many believe, is the Harlot of Babylon.
But, the question that needs to be asked is, what did these named sects believe in, and were they really Christian? To elucidate this, I will describe each of the sects listed in the edict, and what we will realize is that these sects were completely foreign to any Christian denomination (Protestant or Catholic) and more akin to heretical groups such as Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, and other cults which we would deem false and dangerous.
Firstly, the five sects condemned by Constantine cannot be considered as original Christians, simply for the reason that all of them broke away from the Catholic Church many years before Constantine was ever emperor, and were not pre-existing to Constantine, or the Catholic Church.
1. The Valentinians. These were founded by one Valentinus, and his doctrine was blatantly heretical. He denied that Christ came in the flesh, (3) *St. Ambrose, Of the Christian Faith, 2.5* coinciding directly with the heresy condemned by St. John when he wrote:
Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. (2 John 1:7)
St. John
They believed that the Father was both male and female, and that he impregnated a type of goddess named Silence, and through this intercourse, she gave birth to an “aeon” named Only-Begotten who then emitted Christ and the Holy Spirit. (4)
This bizarre belief is reminiscent to Mormonism, which teaches that the Father had literal sex with the Virgin Mary in order to beget Christ. For example, Mormon leader Orson Pratt, once said:
But God having created all men and women, had the most perfect right to do with His own creation, according to His holy will and pleasure: He had a lawful right to overshadow the Virgin Mary in the capacity of a husband
Mormon heretic Orson Pratt
The Valentinians were so blasphemous, that they believed that Christ was in a conjugal relationship with the Holy Spirit. (5) The Valentinians were condemned by St. Polycarp, was he then an agent for the Catholic Church pursuing innocent Bible believers? No. It is true that he was a Catholic, but he pursued heretics, and not only that, he was a student of St. John himself, a fact which cannot go ignored. Irenaeus, a student of St. Polycarp, wrote of St. Polycarp’s relation with the Apostles:
And Polycarp, a man who had been instructed by the apostles, and had familiar intercourse with many that had seen Christ, and had also been appointed bishop by the apostles in Asia, in the church at Smyrna. ...He always taught what he had learned from the apostles, what the church had handed down, and what is the only true doctrine. (6)
St. Polycarp
How could the Valentinians be true Christians if they were teaching such false doctrine and were condemned by a man who had been directly appointed by the Apostles themselves? Either the Apostles lacked discernment when choosing a bishop, or Polycarp was orthodox and the Valentinians were indeed heretical.
This further shows the historical rape which many modern day Christians have done to Church history when condemning Constantine as a repressor of Christians, when he in fact was striving to protect the Church against these very wolves.
2. The Marcionites. These heretics, which are rejected by both Catholic and Protestant scholars, were founded by one Marcion, a native of Pontus, who taught that there was a god greater than the God of the Old Testament, and that, as Islam teaches, God was not the Father of Christ. (7)
Marcion
They affirmed that the God of the Old Testament was evil and corrupt, while the god who Marcion invented, was good. (8) One of their other beliefs was that Christ did not actually fulfill the Law, but abolished it as the work of evil, and that the prophets were all sinister writers and not of God. (9)
The Marcionites were as well condemned by Polycarp, the student of St. John, and when Marcion said to Polycarp, “Acknowledge us,” the saint wittingly responded: “I acknowledge the first-born of Satan.” (10)
3. The Novatians. These were founded by Novatian, a bishop of Rome, over half a century before Constantine’s conversion in 312 AD, and his emperorship in 306 AD.
They were a controlling and legalistic cult, whose main tenet was that Christ could not forgive Christians who, under pain of death, acknowledged the gods of the Roman state, a belief rejected and condemned by the Catholic Church in the third century, (11) and which would be indefinitely condemned by any Protestant or Evangelical church.
He was in fact condemned by a pope, Pope Cornelius, which disproves the common accusation that Constantine was the first pope and the founder of the Catholic Church, and substantiates that the office of pontificate pre-existed the first Christian emperor. Two other popes who reigned in the Church right before Constantine, were Pope Gaius and Pope Marcellinus, who were martyred by the pagans.
Pope Cornelius
Novatus was not only a schismatic, but had to be treated by exorcists on account of demonic possession which lasted for some time. Can a man of Christ’s Way be overtaken by demons, as Muhammad and Joseph Smith were?
He was a violent madman, who robbed money from the Church, taking even charity funds from orphans and widows, allowed his father to starve to death and did not care to even bury him, and murdered his own son by kicking his pregnant wife in the belly. St. Cyprian described his vicious and evil behavior as such:
Orphans despoiled by him, widows defrauded, moneys moreover of the Church withheld, exact from him those penalties which we behold inflicted in his madness. His father also died of hunger in the street, and afterwards even in death was not buried by him. The womb of his wife was smitten by a blow of his heel; and in the miscarriage that soon followed, the offspring was brought forth, the fruit of a father’s murder. And now does he dare to condemn the hands of those who sacrifice, when he himself is more guilty in his feet, by which the son, who was about to be born, was slain? (12)
St. Cyprian
While he refused to accept the lapsed Christians, he himself was terrified of persecution, to the point that when asked to assist the Christians being oppressed by the emperor Decius, he imprisoned himself in fear and even denied that he was a presbyter, affirming that he was “an admirer of a different philosophy.” (13)
When he gave the communion bread to his followers, he did not bless them in anyway, but forced them to promise not to betray him, telling them: “Swear to me, by the body and blood of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, that you will never desert me, not turn to Cornelius [the Pope].” Instead of the receiver saying “Amen” when accepting the bread, he was compelled to say: “I will no longer return to Cornelius.” (14)
Could you imagine Holy Communion being done like this in your church? It was not done to remember Christ, but to compete with the Catholic Church and gain power over it. Again, this was before Constantine, and it was a cult which broke away from the Church, and did not exist before it. It had no Apostolic succession, but was merely a schism which abused and forced its followers to be loyal to Novatus.
They broke the precept taught by St. Paul,
That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. (I Corinthians 12:25)
Saint Paul
4. The Paulians. Their name did not, as some may think, come from St. Paul, but a deceiver named Paul of Samosata who, like Muhammad, taught that Christ was not the Son of God, (15) and that He was not divine, but a mere man. (16)
Constantine repressed this sect, but again, they were heretical and they broke away from the Church, and never had pre-existing church.
5. The Cataphrygians. These are more usually known as Montanists, from their second century Phrygian founder Montanus, He founded his cult similarly to how Joseph Smith founded the LDS, or how Muhammad founded Islam, through a demonic vision.
It was said that he was taken away by an evil spirit which compelled him to go into a violent frenzy in which he uttered all sorts of blasphemies. He attracted two women to join his movement, who has well would enter into hysterical and ecstatic states of ecstasy. They were like Muslim Sufis. They soon founded a cult of wild charismatics who broke away from the Church and believed that they were the true prophets foretold by God. (17)
As the Mormons and the Muslims replaced Jerusalem with Salt Lake City and Mecca, the Montantists declared that the two Phrygian cities, Pepuza and Tymium, were a Jerusalem. *Euseb. Eccles. Hist. 5.18* If the Catholic Church rejected Jerusalem and the Holy Land, as many have said, why would they then condemn this heresy? The Montanists even had a prophet who, like Muhammad, dyed his hair and put on mascara, (18) which reminds us of a lot of a lot of people in the modern day church.
This sums up the five heresies which Constantine’s edict suppresses. They were not Christian, and thus the allegations that Constantine persecuted the original church, founded the Catholic Church and was the first pope, are false.
Those who use these heresies as examples for the original church, are now compelled to either accepts these cults, or admit that the established Church in the time of Constantine, was the same one before Constantine, and that there was no underground church.
Moreover, the fact that Constantine repressed these groups shows that he had a knowledge on the Scripture, and possessed enough discernment to realize that they were dangerous to the Faith.
DID THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ADOPT MITHRAISM?
Mithra on the left
Furthermore, the usual assertion that Constantine introduced Mithraism, or an ancient Persian cult, and Roman paganism, into the Church, is again fallacious.
Mithraism involved the worship of a bull fighter named Mithra, and of fire, and had nothing to do with Christianity. In fact, the cult was repeatedly condemned by Christian authorities before and after the time of Constantine, because the Church never changed its position in regards to the false religion.
For example, the Christian writer Firmicus, who lived during and after the time Constantine, heavily denounced Mithraism as such:
The male they worship as a cattle rustler, and his cult they relate to the potency of fire, as his prophet handed down the lore to us, saying: … ‘Initiate of cattle-rusting, companion by handclasp of an illustrious father’. Him they call Mithra, and his cult they carry on in hidden caves, so that they may be forever plunged in the gloomy squalor of darkness and thus shun the grace of light resplendent and serene. O true consecration of a divinity! O repulsive inventions of a barbaric code! (19)
Firmicus
Was Firmicus going against the Church when he wrote this? No, if he was, why was he never anathematized as a dissenting heretic? Firmicus was simply agreeing with the Church’s teaching on Mithraism, which was affirmed and taught centuries before Constantine was ever emperor. There was no new church to go against, when combating Mithraism.
Another frequent claim by anti-Christian writers (and sadly Christians who believe their lies), is that the idea of Holy Communion originated from Mithraism (the Mitraists used bread and water in their rituals, which is radically different to Christianity and is what Mormons actually do) and that the Catholic Church took this ritual for their Communion.
Justin Martyr, writing in between 151 and 155 AD (20) (around 277 years before Constantine’s conversion), not only chastised and condemned Mithraism, but concluded that its bread and water ritual was a demonic plagiarism of Holy Communion:
For we do not receive these things as common bread nor common drink; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior having been incarnate by God’s logos took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food eucharistized through the word of prayer that is from Him, from which our blood and flesh are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who became incarnate. For the Apostles in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, thus handed down what was commanded them: that Jesus took bread and having given thanks said: “Do this for my memorial, this is my body”; and likewise He took the chalice and having given thanks said: “This is my blood”‘ and gave it to them alone. Which also the wicked demons have imitated in the mysteries of Mithra and handed down to be done; for that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain words said over them in the secret rites of initiation, you either know or can learn. (21)
St. Justin Martyr
The fact that Holy Communion was observed, and Mithraism was condemned, before and after Constantine, shows a consistent tradition being maintained and protected, and not a new church being created after 312 AD.
DID CONSTANTINE ENFORCE PAGANISM INTO THE CHURCH?
Constantine hated paganism and its violent and homosexual practices with such fury, that he passed laws to repress them, and to exterminate the pagan priests of Egypt. Eusebius, one of our major primary writers on Constantine, recounts that:
Consistently with this zeal he [Constantine] issued successive laws and ordinances, forbidding any to offer sacrifice to idols, to consult diviners, to erect images, or to pollute the cities with the sanguinary combats of gladiators. And inasmuch as the Egyptians, especially those of Alexandria, had been accustomed to honor their river through a priesthood composed of effeminate men, a further law was passed commanding the extermination of these as a corrupt and vicious class of persons, that no one might thenceforward be found tainted with the like impurity. (22)
We could reasonably compare these laws to those of Moses, which prescribe the death penalty for paganism and homosexuality. These laws were definitely influenced by Biblical laws, for, according to Eusebius, he would “devote himself to the perusal of the inspired writings.” (23)
Not only that, but Constantine built Constantinople to be a city without the blemish of heathenism and idolatry, without the worship of devils and pagan temples. In the words of St. Augustine, it was to be a city “without any temple or image of the demons.” (23A)
St. Augustine
DID CONSTANTINE OUTLAW THE BIBLE?
A frequent accusation is that Constantine outlawed the Bible from being read privately. The truth is that he respected the Bible to the point that he ordered fifty Bibles to be copied for the churches. This was a very laborious project, because in those days there was no printing machines or internet, books had to be copied down by hand, it was costly and time consuming.
Most people in that age would not have been able to afford purchasing a Bible, and Constantine was charitable enough to give Bibles to churches so that the Scriptures could be read to the congregants.
Constantine issued this order to the bishop Eusebius for this to be done, writing:
Do you, therefore, receive with all readiness my determination on this behalf. I have thought it expedient to instruct your Prudence to order fifty copies of the sacred scriptures (the provisions and use of which you know to be most needful for the instruction of the Church) to be written on prepared parchment in a legible manner, and in a commodious and portable form, by transcribers thoroughly practiced in their art. (24)
Eusebius
After Constantine defeated one of the greatest persecutors of the Church, the pagan emperor Maxentius, the Roman senate erected an arch in honor of the victory, and unlike former emperors, it did not give any praise to Jupiter, Apollo, or Mars. (25)
Before 312 AD, the year of Constantine’s conversion, Roman coins were minted with pagan symbolism, but after 312, the coins are seen with Christian imagery. (26) All of these indications lead to the conclusion that there was indeed a significant change in the empire after Constantine’s conversion.
Did pagan influence remain in the empire? Yes, but was there a new Church established, made with both Christian and pagan beliefs and rituals? No. The Church was the same as it was prior to Constantine, the only difference was that it was allowed to exist without pagan government despotism.
Because of Constantine, the great persecutors of the church, such as Maxentius, Gallerius, and Licinius, were vanquished, Christianity was allowed to thrive. Because of Constantine’s liberation of the Church, Christianity spread as it did, and became the dominant Faith in the world, but of course this is not the case today.
Let this essay teach a good lesson, that history has been lacerated and defiled, and that the Church, in antiquity, was a beacon of light destroying the forces of evil and heresy, unlike today, where it has became a circus.
The Church is here to destroy the works of the devil, and let us do so in light of what the early Christians did, and not defile their history, but repeat it.
The Crusading Christian 