Bible Study: Is God’s Church “Christian”?

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A country's government, its religion, and its aristocracy are often interconnected. Combined, they provide the control over the population, along with the manipulation of wealth and power.

The worker citizens are the ones who support an aristocracy and a government that is entitled. It has various entitlements that help support its wealth development. In Bible times, we see some of those countries being Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. In modern times, we see examples such as Russia, China, and North Korea. We see a coming one-world government power that dominates along with a religion and wealth for an aristocracy.

We see in countries even where there are atheists, the religion is the demagogue or the ruler being almost worshipped as the provider. Consider the government of ancient Egypt for a minute. When you go back to the origins of Egypt, you have a very fertile North Africa, fertile enough that it was grazing land, where you have the Sahara Desert today.

Shepherds had their cattle, their sheep, their goats out there, and they were grazing. Over at the Nile River, you had farmers where the Nile would swell and then it would recede. The land there was rich with nutrients. Grazers, herdsmen, shepherds, and farmers. What happened was North Africa began to dry up and the shepherds then began to lose their pasture land. They began to lose their livelihood and they came up with a plan. They developed a religion and sold it to the farmers and said, we have the mystery religion of the afterlife and we are priests of this religion. If you will support us as the ruling religious leadership and aristocrats, you can go to heaven when you die.

The farmers became subservient to the shepherds. As you'll find when the Israelites had been in Egypt for a long time, the Egyptians hated shepherds. But they had such control that Israel, being the lowest of the classes after 450 years of being there, they were producing the things for the aristocrats, the buildings, the crops. But they themselves were really in dire shape.

When you think, for instance, of Babylon's rulers, they invented a state religion and then they required its citizens to come under that religion and worship. It was for population control and it's evidenced by the fact that if you didn't worship the image, you got thrown in a fiery furnace. That's what the religion was about, population control. Government control of citizens maximized with superstitious religion. Religion helps keep the helpless helpless. It helps them be dependent and the promises evoked by the religion always encourage them to generously contribute that little bit that they have of wealth to the aristocrats through the religion so that they can have someday a better life in the afterlife.

Religion at the same time helps the aristocrats be entitled to receive and do things and typically own the land that the workers have to go out and sort of share a crop in. History of humanity is basically a version of sharecropping where you have landowners who are the aristocrats and then you have those who are dependent and in debt to them who actually do the work and grow the crops and build the buildings. And religion is a... well, it's like Karl Marx said in 1844, religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature.

It is the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions. Religion is the opium of the people. We might have said religion is the opium for the people because religion is always a created thing. It's an invented thing and it's always controlled from the top and often the state authorities are the head of the religion, such as Church of England.

King is the head of the church. What's important to recognize is God and His Word turns all of that on its head. Let's go to Exodus 5 and verse 4. Here we had the Israelites in Egypt as the lowest in the serfdom of having nothing. The landowners were having them produce the crops and the buildings and everything. They had nothing. Exodus 5 and verse 4 now brings God on the scene and He turns this whole system totally on its head. Nothing like it in history. Exodus 5 will begin in verse 4. Then the king of Egypt said to them, Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people from their work? Get back to your labor. And Pharaoh said, look, the people of the land are many now.

And you make them rest from their labor? So the same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, you shall no longer give the people straw to make brick as before. Let them go gather straw for themselves. Verse 8, you lay on them the quota of bricks which they made before. You shall not reduce it. For they are idle and they cry out, saying, let us go and sacrifice to our God. But what happened was in what God said is, come out of Egypt and you come to a place that I'm going to show you a new land that will be your own land. So the lowest of the low who were in these meager conditions walked out of Egypt and became the landowners under a benevolent God.

If we go to Deuteronomy 28 in verse 11, we find that in this new relationship with God, this supreme authority over them says, the Lord will grant you plenty of goods.

In the fruit of your body, the increase of your livestock, your livestock, the produce of your ground, in the land which the Lord swore to you your fathers to give you.

All of a sudden, you see, the God is with the people who are the aristocracy, the landowners, and blessed with all the possible possessions you could have in life.

And in verse 13, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, a total flip.

You shall be above only and not beneath if you heed the commandments and you're careful to observe them. So God brought freedom from control and freedom from some mysterious, superstitious, kind of hopey thing in the future called religion. Instead of control, God offers choice. Every other country, every other religion requires a control. God doesn't control you.

God offers you choice. Remember in the Bible there in Deuteronomy 28, choose life. Choose elsewhere. Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. It's something you choose if you want to. It says here, as we just read, if you obey, it didn't say you will obey. It says if you choose to obey.

So God here is the benevolent ruler who actually is exemplifying his guidebook for life, the rulebook for life, how to live. He himself is living it. He's not some entitled being and his priests entitled to something and then the workers down there have to do something different to support the entitlements. Do you think of the kingdom of God as a religion? Have you ever thought of the kingdom of God as a religion? Oh, I want to be in the kingdom.

It doesn't really come to mind, does it? We want to be in God's kingdom, but we don't think of it as a religion, do we? We think of it as a government with principles and laws, a way of living, a way of building, a way of developing.

Is God's church a religion? Good question. We'll look at that in a little bit.

The title of this Bible study is, Is God's Church Christianity? Christianity is a religion.

Is God's church Christianity? That's a question I've asked myself. Sometimes people ask me, what is religion in the Bible? Can you think of what religion is in the Bible?

Well, it's only mentioned once. In the entire Bible, religion appears one time.

Let's go to James chapter 1 verses 26 and 27. It's the only place you'll find religion in the Bible.

James 1 verses 26. If anyone among you thinks he is religious, if he thinks he's religious and does not bridle his tongue, he deceives his own heart, and this one's religion is useless.

Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this.

To visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world, that's religion. Well, that's the Bible's definition of religion. Go visit orphans and widows and keep yourself unspotted from the world. It doesn't sound like a religious book, does it? Sounds like more of a manual for how to live in the kingdom of God within the realm of the kingdom of heaven. I'm not saying it's not religious or religion, but we've just seen the only use of the word in Scripture. God has a way. God has a truth. God has a life. This church was once first called the way. It's a way of living. Like God and Christ live. Like the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven lives. And it's life for the family of God. In contrast, we're going to see that Christianity requires one to disobey the tenets of this book. It's absolutely required.

In what is called Christianity, or sometimes nominal Christianity, or Christianity in name only. Where this provides benefits for all, religions of the world provide future benefit for me, me only. It's about me. If you ever listen to gospel music, you'll find that the God of gospel music is me. It's about me and how I feel. And the future is about me. But God's way is about everyone. So today I'd like to see the stark contrast between what is defined as the church of God in Scripture and nominal Christianity throughout time. Now the goal of this Bible study isn't to put anybody down, but so that we can easily recognize the religion that's coming and see it for what it is. It will give us the ability to not be deceived as Jesus has warned so many will be, because we need to recognize the false religion of the end time is nothing more than has always been. It's for control, for power, for wealth of an aristocracy.

So let's look here. We see in this book the law. And what is the law? It's rules. Rules for living.

Jesus said if you want to enter into life, keep the rules. Keep the commandments. In others, think like the family does. The prophets. Well, we have the prophets. The prophets show God's future plan for humanity speaks of what's going to happen and what God has planned for his family. The Psalms is a combination of the commandments or the laws, the application of the laws, the future of God's family, and also the emotional, as it were, affirmations that one personally has for those things. Then in the New Testament, we have the New Covenant that shows how to live God's Word within the family of God as a son, as a daughter, as a future bride of Christ.

Jesus came bringing the good news of God's way of living with the truth, the way, the truth, and the life. And he said the truth will set you free. Set you free from this domination of power and false religion that is designed to keep you under control and to sap your wealth, what little you have, and give it to aristocrats. When we look at the Roman Empire in Jesus' day, let's see if this will work. There we go. The Roman Empire in Jesus' day was quite large, and down here, right in this area here, you see Galilee, Jerusalem. That little area right there would be later called Palistina, the district of what we call Palestine. This was following Rome's conquering of Greece. The Roman Empire at this point had become quite large. One thing it didn't have was unity because it conquered a whole bunch of people, taken them all to slaves, built out a fabulous enterprise territory with connecting roads and also sea lanes for the transport of goods for the aristocracy. And those who were conquered became the servants, the workers. But they really wanted calmness. And by Jesus' day, things were pretty calm because the Roman soldiers were everywhere on the roads and trying to keep things calm. They were right there in Judea, trying to keep a lid on the Jews, etc., etc. And they enforced the peace across this land and it crossed its people. So there's a stress here on money, on trade routes, on holding power and having domination.

The Romans attributed their world power success to keeping relations good with all the local gods and the territories they conquered. If you could conquer a territory and then the local gods that the people worshipped and looked to for salvation, you kept them as well. You could keep control over your empire. And that was their secret to wealth.

It was very polytheistic. They had, I've counted up the Roman gods in the list, 214 throughout the empire. They tried to keep them all happy. We see in Acts 17, verse 22, Paul is in Athens and he says, I perceive that you are very religious because you got all these gods. I see the one unknown god even. Just so many local gods. But among all the gods, there was a misfit. There was a misfit. God number 215. Hero Israel, our god, is one. There's only one. Not 214. Uh-oh. This is going to cause a ripple in the empire. This is going to cause a breach in the success of the Roman empire, maintaining all 214 gods. You've got this one group that says there are no other gods. Only ours. Got to deal with that one. That's why Jesus Christ was problematic for the Roman empire. That's why the New Testament church was problematic. That's why there was so much persecution in the first, second, third centuries, even in the fourth century, against anything that resembled one god. It was problematic. It undermined the very basis for power, control, and wealth.

In 31 AD, the the the Jews were wanting a revolt. They wanted to have their one god be the ruler.

Caiaphas was the local governor by Rome, and he had made alliances with the Jewish, the high priests. They were selling these things and maintaining an aristocracy both within the Jews and within the Romans, keeping a lid on things. Their solution was to kill Jesus Christ, maintain the balance of power and the money on the Jewish side and on the on the Roman side. We find another 30 years passed after that. The Jews, again, were pushing. They were hoping.

And in Acts chapter 24 through 28, we see the Apostle Paul there teaching about Jesus Christ, and he was arrested, sent to Rome. He was eventually killed. The Jewish revolt was led by Josephus, and that resulted in Jerusalem being burned and the temple being destroyed and no stone being left on another to control them. And later, they they got rid of all the Jews, pushed them totally out of the area, and then named it Palestine, just so that Jews wouldn't come back, wouldn't like the name. If we fast forward to the fourth century in the Roman Empire, by now the Roman Empire emperors are struggling to keep things together because this concept of Christianity had gotten out of hand. There was this religion that had kind of pulled together a belief in a Jesus Christ and a Sunday and an Easter and things like that going on, but it was challenging all the local gods—Apollo, various sun gods, Saturn, etc., etc., and it was tearing up the empire. So for about 300 years, they were killing Christians, sometimes torturing them to death and just trying to annihilate this undermining influence.

The Judeo-Christian insistence on Yahweh being the only god and that all other gods were false gods could not be fitted in. They also rejected an emperor's divinity. This was not going well.

And then you even had one or two of the emperors declare themselves Christian. Oh, this is just bedlam for the empire. So anything that was Christian got blamed for upending the peace. For 250 years, they tried to eradicate it.

You come down to 313 AD. Finally, this isn't working.

The edict of my land was given by Constantine Augustus and Lekinus Augustus. They decided in 313 AD at the edict of my land to grant to Christians and to everybody the free power to follow the religion of their choice in order that all that is in divine in the heavens may be favorable and propitious towards all who are placed under our authority.

They want to keep the authority, but now they have to let this pagan Christianity be allowed, pressured into it. That didn't work well. In 321, Constantine then declared, all are to rest on the venerable day of the sun. That didn't work out, so all have to rest on the venerable day of the sun. In 325, Constantine finally, totally exasperated, at his own expense, called religious and political leaders together to Nicaea, and held what was the Council of Nicaea. He took charge. He declared himself the pontiff of the church, of which he was not a part, pontiff of the Roman Empire. He was not religious other than he liked the sun god at that point. The Council of Nicaea created unity of the Roman Empire through a new church. As the supreme pontiff, he decreed Christianity will worship on Sunday, on Easter, and it will teach the Trinity. The purpose of here, of course, is government control across the region and all religions. Some division continued, however, and after his death, and 75 years later, there's a Pope Damascus who invented a religion that's going to appeal to everybody. He took all the 214 gods and he made them into one. And he said this one is Jesus Christ, and he kind of pulled it all together, and he created a single Catholic or universal religion that satisfied the one god. And here's what it is. 30 AD, the emperors of the Eastern and Western Roman Empire jointly issued this edict. Let us believe in the one deity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. In a holy trinity, we order the followers of this law to embrace the name of Catholic Christians or universal Christians, but as for the others, we decree that they shall be branded heretics and shall not presume to be given the name of churches. They will suffer the punishment of our authority, which we shall decide to inflict.

So there you have created religion for the purpose of control and management of wealth with punishment if you don't subscribe to that religion. Same as Egypt, same as Babylon, same as Persia, same as Greece. Here it is in Rome and the successive revivals of the Roman Empire. A obligatory church membership was required of all citizens throughout the empire.

The notable tenants Sabbath was removed. Quote, all shall rest on the venerable day of the sun. Roman Sunday, midnight Saturday night to midnight Sunday night. Never even touches the Sabbath. Passover was removed. Easter was required. Passover, a rule, was made that it could never touch Easter. Therefore, any time the Passover got close to Easter, Easter was moved a week later. That's why you still see it today. God's Holy Day festivals were removed. Instead, Roman festivals were Lupercalia, which is Valentine's Day today, Liberalia, which celebrated male fertility, Floralia celebrated feminine fertility, Volcanalia celebrated Vulcan, the god of fire, Quentaria was the goddess Minerva, Saturnalia the god Saturn became Christmas and New Year's.

Those were the holy days of this religion. And the preaching of a coming kingdom of God was totally removed. It was replaced that the kingdom of God is now the Holy Roman Church, and the pope is ruling in place of Jesus Christ. That began with Pope Linus in 67 AD.

So you see the roots now of this religion and where it's going. There's the slide of Council of Nicaea.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We come now to the Dark Ages the next 500 years from Liberty University, University regarding the Roman Catholic or universal Church. Corruption and moral decadence amid general chaos were the norm.

Christianity was dissolving into a syncristic religion intermingled with paganism.

Well, that's where you have this religion through the next 500 years of the Dark Ages, coming up to the year 1000. The Roman Church focused on aristocratic accumulation of control and wealth and entitlements, and it just became bizarre at the top of what all was done and the wealth that was sucked in, the land that was acquired, the locals who became subservient once again to producing food and kind of a sharecropping kind of a way, and oftentimes they would starve.

From Liberty University, 700 AD, papal infallibility was decreed.

Anything he said was infallible. He could come up with anything.

800, Pope Leo III crowned German King Charlemagne as Roman Empire. In the 900, Pope John XII crowned King Otto of Germany as the Holy Roman Empire, and the Pope was declared the embodiment of Christ, the beginning of the millennium reign of Christ. Is there anything left of what we follow and believe? Coming up to the year 1000, Roman Christianity were expected to hold whatever faith their nobleman, the aristocrat, the prince, had, and that faith was an adulteration of superstition, syncretism, and a gospel about Jesus being born and Jesus dying, and them being the go-betweens of a person's salvation and God. We look here, for instance, at this slide. We see a Roman Catholic Cathedral's choir. The choir area isn't the singer's. It's called a choir. It's up near the altar, and you can see the sides there where aristocrats would essentially pay for seats or have the seats there. Cathedrals were built with this concept that a cathedral shows the piety and also the power and prestige of the aristocrats who attend there, and so they got a great amount of money donated by the aristocrats, and also the peasantry would come and donate generously towards their future and hope for a better life. So these were almost big cash machines, though they didn't use cash at the time, but personal wealth would flow into these things, and they were the largest buildings in any city, the most grand exotic things that were built to the extremes of human imagination to express one's piety and support and also the wealth and the status of those who would be in the congregation.

But constant wars destroyed the lands, and those who worked the lands were left without a livelihood. You had this superficial church with struggling alliances among the aristocrats, you had corruption full-born. The church became a meaningless institution, and over hundreds of years the Roman Catholic priests and cathedrals had restricted even the local aristocrats from participating in the power. If you were in Germany or England or France or Spain, and you were an aristocrat there, they brought their own cathedral, and it was their cash cow, and they ruled. They could crown your leader as king or not. They could decide who would marry and who would not. A forming alliance is a big political structure based on not only politics and power, but also trade.

Pushback began to grow between the Roman Catholic hierarchy and also political factions.

In 950 AD, there was beginning to be a revolt against government and the oppression, both at the aristocratic level and also at the lower level. And then an element turned the entire world on its head. About 1000 AD, something happened that changed the world as we know it and continues today. That element was money. Money came along.

Money didn't require class. Money didn't require land. Money didn't require religion.

Money was personal power to do what you wanted, and you could get it through personal business.

People began, once money became available, people said, well, I'll just do some work over here and I'll get some money. And all of a sudden, all this land that you had to work was no longer required. The aristocracy that went with it was no longer supported. The church that was supposedly regulating everything and the government that controlled it now found an equal class rising up with it, doing what they wanted across international boundaries. People started businesses.

And suddenly, class, land, and religion became less relevant across Europe.

They had to get back control and power and wealth. But how? Countries began denouncing the Roman church. They said, oh, you guys are so corrupt and what you're doing is so bad. They began to look at the Bible. Somebody created the Geneva Bible about then.

And they said, look in here. What you're doing doesn't have a pope. And what you're requiring is not in the Bible, not that we're going to follow the Bible, but that gives us reason to start our own copy of the Roman church without a pope. I call it religion sans a pope.

They were protesting. They weren't really protesting anything and had nothing really to do with the Bible. That was just the excuse. They began to print Bibles and make Bibles so that they could say, I don't have to have a pope and I don't have to have your religion. It says right here.

Oh, so this did not go very, very well. The number of protesting Christians, protesting Catholics, that's what a Protestant is, it's a Catholic and protest, increased dramatically over the next 500 years. We come fast forward to the 16th century, the 1500s in Europe, and we have the Protestant Reformation. Let's look here. Well, I'll show you a Catholic. There's a Protestant church, choir, the cathedral, both cathedrals. See, just because one's Protestant or Catholic, they didn't get rid of the religion. They didn't even get rid of the liturgy or the priesthood. They just got rid of the pope and declared local autonomy for that class of rulership. The Habsburg dynasty, we've seen how the Holy Roman Empire isn't doing so well by the time you come up to the 1500s. This is the Habsburg dynasty map. The yellow is because the head of the church now is Spanish and Spain, and some areas were dominant, the king of Spain.

The area up there in the red had sort of the more eastern aspect of it. It was a newer part of the Habsburg dynasty, but you can see things are slipping out of control. France and England and Northern Europe, they were beginning to come up with their own types of religions and growing independent rule, independent regions, competing trade routes, money. These things were rising in France and Belgium and Holland, up in Germany, Northern Germany, Scandinavia, and of course England. As a counter to this, the Roman Catholic Church started up the Jesuits, which was an army, an armed army, to go out and require people or force people to stay Catholic. That didn't really work so well. So they did the Inquisition, especially in Spain, because that was where the the Pope and the head of Spain was so strong. They were starting to lose Spain, and they were starting to lose France. So they started the Inquisition through there. And the Inquisition, I'm just going to read here, from the Catholic Encyclopedia, at the head of the Inquisition, known as the Holy Office, stood the Grand Inquisitor, who was nominated by the King and confirmed by the Pope. So this Inquisition was set up by the ruling kings, Spain, France, and by the Pope. Torture was applied too frequently and too cruelly, the Catholic Encyclopedia says. They devised ultimate methods of pain and torture and longevity, and they spread these things out in the public along roads. The Pope sanctioned the institution, gave the Grand Inquisitor judicial authority, and he in turn gave jurisdiction to local tribunals. They empowered even French citizens to they could seek out wealthy landowners, and if you could torture them to the point where they admitted that they were not Catholics, you could have their land in all their possessions.

Just imagine how well that worked for true Catholic believers with land and possessions. When you could torture somebody to where they finally give up and say, okay, I'm not a Catholic, great, got your land. I mean, this whole thing was just bad. But anyway, going on. From usCatholic.com, well, residents of the town of Bizières found it to be a mixture of Catholics and Cathars when the Inquisition came in. The leader of the Inquisition just said, kill the whole town and let God sort out His own. And so they wrote then to the Pope, our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex, or age, and put to the sword almost 20,000 people. After this great slaughter, the whole city was despoiled and burnt. Catholics and Protestants together. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes the Inquisition's hoarders and justifies them today. These bear out that the Inquisition marks a substantial advance in the contemporary administration of justice, and therefore an advance in the general civilization of mankind. Plato had declared it one of the supreme duties of the government of authority to show no toleration toward those who had denied the state religion, even though they lived quietly without proselytizing. They're quoting Plato 1500, 2000 years before the Inquisition, they're quoting Plato, a ruler in Greece, before the Roman Empire even existed as being the source of defense. You can see where this religion coming from, Babylon through Greece to Rome, defended even today, is going in the future.

Again, we see the things that are going on. So, what happened then, as we saw back here with the—let's go back a bit—go back to the Protestant Cathedral. Once in a while it works. Go back to the Protestant Cathedral. Copycat Christian churches popped up everywhere. Copycat Roman churches.

And in 1545 AD, the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church, tried what I'll call a Hail Mary to try to regain religious control. It's out of—it's tried everything. It does this Hail Mary kind of a thing. Worldhistory.org says, the Council of Trent reaffirmed the authority of the Catholic Church and condemned Protestant theology, and it also tried to reform its own church abusiveness. It reaffirmed the fourth century edict of Milan. No church can exist, except the Roman Catholic Church. Well, William Tyndall, around then, made an English translation of the Bible. Until then, the Roman Catholic Church had always done everything in Latin. The locals didn't understand it. The worker bees. And they had their own Bible in Latin, so nobody really knew what was going on. Tyndall made an English common language Bible, and he had to run from the King of England. He had to hide out in Europe to try to finish it. He got the New Testament done and the first five books of the Bible done, but they finally killed him and burned his body on the stake. But this Bible began to get out.

The readers of that Bible, which this Bible is 90% Tyndall, were burned alive.

Even if you were a child and you cited, say, the Beatitudes burned alive at the stake.

Like Christianity? Not my part of Christianity. Is this Church Christianity?

So the European protesting reformation gets going with spin-offs, and they used this Bible pops up, so now they're using a few scriptures out of here to say, hey, we don't have to follow.

The result here, the Roman Catholic Church, was this 30 years war. 30 years war was one of the longest, most destructive conflicts in European history. It lasted from 618 to 1648. A lot of things happened between those years. This Bible had already been printed, by the way, threw into the mix another Bible that people could read. There was more breaking apart from the Roman Catholic Church, so they went to war in many places. Huge destruct. This is Christianity at war. Murdering, killing, decimating. Let's say everybody was fighting everybody.

Allegiances were changing, and a jumbled mess across Europe. If you want to see some of this, you look at this map, you see all the colors, alliances. It was just a total mess, and nothing was done except a destruction of Europe like nobody had seen.

Chaos reigned. The Holy Roman Empire became one theater in a wide struggle between most European countries. It was marked by unprecedented brutality and, on too many occasions, forced starvation, as the soldiers would take the crops away from the people.

In some warring areas, more than half of the citizens died or relocated.

This Christianity is highly justified in history, in modern times.

The Holy Roman Empire then fragmented into hundreds of small, autonomous political entities. Spain fell from power, never recovered, and the Pope finally acknowledged the existence of other churches. The Bible, though, continued to threaten not only Roman Catholics now, but also Protestant rulers control. People now had this Bible, and they could see that Protestantism does not follow the scriptures. And so, like the kings of England and other places, began burning people alive for reading the Bible. When you hear of, say, the Mayflower, it was nothing but a group of people after this Bible was published by King James. King James went after people who followed the Bible and denounced the Anglican Church, of which he was the head. So they had to be put to death.

So groups like the Calvinists or the Puritans had to escape and get out of there.

King Henry VIII had wanted autonomous rulership. He wanted his own wife. The Catholic Church wouldn't let him divorce. So he started killing off his wives, and he came up with his own church, declared the Church of England. He died. His daughter Elizabeth I, her rule was threatened by Mary, Queen of Scots, so she killed her. And then you have her son, King James I, the one who writes this Bible. He's really an equandry, so he gets talked into having this Bible made. You know, if you have this Bible made, then that'll, it's a good religious book, and that'll solidify your power. Well, it did the opposite. Everybody now had the English Bible, and they're like, I don't think the Church of England is the right thing. That really upset people. So now he started hanging people and burning them alive. Today, Christianity still conforms to Babylon and Rome's religion. It's a mixture of this Christianity that requires breaking God's law. The Sabbath, the Holy Days, meats, foods, the gospel.

Let's just look at Romans 214, God's modern for sale. This is a store, by the way, Roman Catholic story. Go in and pick your own God. Take it home. Take two or three of the same one.

Romans 214, gods have now become statues of 10,800 saints, local gods around the world. The Roman Catholic Church has venerated. The church winded, I don't know, about the 809. When they started doing statues, icons, then they bemoaned the fact that people couldn't tell the difference between the statue and the real god or deity or whatever that it represented.

And, as is true today, they couldn't separate these from the real thing. And so, according to Roman Catholic, psychobedia idolatry has resulted. Today it has 1.3 billion members. It controls 177 million acres of land around the world. The wealth of the Roman Catholic Church today cannot be calculated. It's impossible to calculate. Some countries can calculate it in its small areas, but it's impossible for even the Roman Catholic Church to calculate it because they put a $1 value on anything, a value saying it's priceless. And they have so much. If we fast forward now to the end time, the ancient cultural and religious heritage has been carefully retained. And a revival of the Roman Empire will arise shortly before Christ returns. It's going to be a one-world system, and it will have a religion that will help it acquire power and wealth before Christ returns. Let's look in Revelation chapter 18 and verse 9.

It's talking about in verse 1. It says, let's see, verse 2, Babylon the Great has fallen has fallen. Now we come down to verse 9. The kings of the earth who committed fornication.

There's a difference here between fornication and marriage, isn't there? You know, fornication is only about two people taking from each other. No commitment, no marriage, no giving, just taking.

The kings of the earth have taken from through the system of power and corruption control, have taken and lived luxuriously with her. And they will weep and lament for her when they see the smoke of her burning standing at a distance for fear of her torment, saying, alas, the great city, Babylon, the mighty city. Verse 11, the merchants of the earth. It's always about the merchants here.

They're going to mourn. No one buys their merchandise. Verse 12, merchandise of really good stuff, the best of the best. Verse 13 at the end, and bodies and souls of men, slavery, sold.

Verse 14, the fruit that your soul longed for has gone from you, and all the things which are rich and splintered have gone from you. You shall find them no more at all. When you look here, you see this image of Daniel. And in Revelation chapter 13, we go back just a little bit, Revelation 13, in verse 1, I stood on the sand of the sea, and I saw a beast rising out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, on his heads a blasphemous name.

You can see from our booklet about the beast power at the end, what's coming ahead.

He has a blasphemous name, nothing to do with God, nothing to do with the kingdom of heaven. Now, the beast which I saw was like a leopard, and when we look here, we see the leopard was Greece, and like a bear, and the bear was Persia, and a lion, it's like Babylon. So it's a Roman revival, but it goes right back through this old, fake, created religious system, going on, and the dragon gave him his power and his throne and great authority.

In verse 4, so they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him? This is the religion. It's not a way of life. It's a control for survival and prosperity for those who are entitled.

I never see in Revelation a resurgence of religion and Bible. It's not even mentioned here. It's about power and control and wealth resuming, just like it always had been from Babylon on down.

In verse 6, then he opened his mouth to blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, his tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven. And it was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome or conquer them. And authority was given to him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. That doesn't sound real. Warm and fuzzy religion, does it? This is about power and control and wealth for some. And he says here in verse 12, the second beast exercises all the authority of the first beast and his presence and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast.

That's your religion. You fall down before the image, just like in Babylon with Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

His sole role is consolidating the government's power and money through sin. Verse 15, he was granted power to give breath to the image that the image of the beast should speak and cause as many as who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. No religion there. No religion there. It's a talking statue of control.

And then verse 16, he causes all small, great, rich, poor, free, slave to receive a mark control that no one may buy or sell without the mark. This final superpower booklet shows what's going to happen to that system.

Am I a Christian? I guess it would depend on who's asking what understanding they would have. I am with the rock that's going to hit the bottom of that whole system. When we think of, am I a Christian? You know how many times the Bible equates Christians with God's church? Once. One time. I wouldn't say there's a whole lot hanging on that word. Acts 11, verse 26, I won't turn there. You can look at it if you want. But over a hundred times, the Bible calls the church children of God, elect, and saints. That's what I want to be known as. Son of God, daughter of God, elect, saints. Saints are the most high. We are citizens of the kingdom of God. We go directly to the Father. We're a wife to the son.

Instead of entrapment and subjugation to lower class and control, God says, you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood. Oh, look at there! That's a complete flip. All of a sudden, we're the priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, and we co-inherit everything with Jesus Christ, everything that exists in heaven and earth.

In conclusion, let's look at God's instruction to you and me regarding religious Babylonian Christianity. Here's a little image.

That's an image of a euro, a two euro coin that was issued in Greece only. You can see it is written in Greek, but here you can see a woman writing the beast holding a cup of wine in her hand. In Revelation chapter 18, again in verse 2, it says Babylon has fallen in verse 3, for all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication and have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury. Verse 5, for her sins have reached to heaven and God has remembered her iniquities.

Verse 7, in the measure that she glorified herself and lived luxuriously in the same measure, give her torment and sorrow. For she says in her heart, I sit as a queen, I am no widow, and I will not see sorrow. Therefore, her plagues will come in one day, death and mourning and famine, and she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord who judges her. So, brethren, let's avoid any fornication or self-seeking to get in and get something for me with the powers of sin and wealth.

Never want any part of that. It may look good for the moment, but we just saw the drawing of Jesus Christ shattering that. So, be a son and daughter of your heavenly Father. Be a wise virgin to Christ.

Be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.