April 4, 2015
Church History – part 3: The Reign of Religion
We’ve been looking at the history of the Church in the 6th Dispensation from the perspective of the seven letters Jesus dictated to seven churches in Asia Minor. When examined in the order presented, I believe the letters outline the history of the Church in advance.
The first two letters documented the growth of the early church from the age of the Apostles, immediately after Jesus’ resurrection, through the 3rd century. We also saw Satan’s early attempts to destroy the Church. In the last post, we saw that what Satan couldn’t do through corruption and persecution, he accomplished by “marrying” the church to the world – when church leaders compromised with the Mystics.
In this post we will examine the fourth letter that was sent to the church in Thyatira and see how the Mystics consolidated their power over the church to grow it into a monstrous and grotesque perversion of the humble collection of believers that Jesus intended it to be.
The Report Card on Thyatira – Pagan Corruption
The letter seemingly starts off well enough with Jesus commending the church for their good works and charity (the effort of which increases over time). However the problem is that they allowed a woman named “Jezebel” to corrupt the Church with pagan ideas and practices.
So who was this Jezebel person? In the denotative sense she probably was an actual pagan priestess who seduced the 1st century congregation in Thyatira with her mysticism. But in the historic sense, I believe she represents something more.
In some translations, “that woman Jezebel” is rendered “your wife Jezebel”. This rendering would fit with the marriage concept from Pergamos. It would also frame “Jezebel” as a metaphor as well as an actual person. This letter represents the age when the church fully embraced the doctrines and practices of the Mystics – the time when Roman Catholicism was the dominant force in the world, from about 800AD to about 1800AD.
Hostile takeover
As we saw in the last post, once Christianity gained a position of power in the fading Roman Empire, the Mystics slithered their way into the sphere of influence by convincing the church leaders to merge Christianity with their pagan mysticism under the guise of reforming the pagans. But any compromise between water and poison can only result in a victory for the poison (it’ll just kill you a little slower).
Predictably, the Mystics quickly gained control of church leadership and became the dominate doctrinal authorities during this time period. The declining imperial rule of the Roman Caesars was transformed into the theocratic rule of the Roman Papacy. Where once the world was ruled by armies, it would now be ruled by an arguably more powerful force – religion!
The power of religion
As I’ve written before, Mystics gain, consolidate, and grow their power over the masses through an elaborate con game wherein they dupe people into surrendering their wills to them by making them believe that the Mystics are more powerful than they really are –and religion has traditionally been the perfect tool to accomplish this.
Religion takes man’s innate knowledge and awe of the spiritual, and combines it with his natural tendency to think comparatively. This powerful combination makes religion the most effective way to enslave men’s minds, because it’s self-directed! People WANT to be religious! Religion promises to relive our pervasive guilt while still allowing us to feel like we’re in control. It’s an extremely seductive proposition that leads to a death spiral.
Racketeering in the name of Jesus
The “Christian” Mystics decreed that they we’re the unquestioned leaders of the Church and that God made them His exclusive emissaries on earth.
They used their fraudulent authority to set themselves up as the final arbiters of God’s word, His official spokes persons, and the gatekeepers of the afterlife. (Here’s a list of their false teachings).
It was actually a great racket. If you can convince people that you are Heaven’s official bouncers, and that God has given you power of attorney on earth, you can basically get away with anything – and they pretty much did!
They pilfered untold riches from the people “in the name of God”, they built spectacularly ornate and gaudy edifices (under the guise of honoring the humble carpenter from Nazareth who eschewed the luxuries of this world). They practiced all manner of sexual and lascivious debauchery, and obscene abuses of power.
They twisted the message of salvation so that it was no longer just by believing and accepting Christ’s finished work on the cross, but that you had to EARN it by “appeasing God” though you own efforts and “good works” as well as any number of quasi-Biblical (or outright pagan) rituals that had been “Christianized” by the Mystics.
If anyone dared resist, they were labeled a heretic and condemned to Hell.
But its gets worse
With this religious structure in place, the power of the Mystics grew exponentially until they literally had armies of devoted followers. This allowed the Mystics of Spirit to co-opt and assume the methods of their historic partners, the Mystics of Force.
Emperors became “Popes”, Senators became “Cardinals”, territories became diocese, governors became “Bishops”, and warriors become “holy”.
The people in the Mystic’s geographic areas of influence who tried to resist their power and could not be converted through religious persuasion, could now be dealt with by force!
The Popes promised, blessings, indulgences and heavenly bounties to those kings and soldiers willing to kill, conquer, and die for “the Church”.
They enacted various inquisitions, persecuted and expelled Jews who would not convert, and they killed anyone who dared accuse them of warping Christianity – or even disagreed with any part of their world view on anything!
Collateral damage
This led to one of the most tragic outcomes of the rule of the Christian Mystics: they convinced the public that they represented God, thus leading the world to believe that God must be just as unjust and unrighteous, cruel, petty, irrational, bigoted, sexist, hypocritical, vain, elitist, aloof, unpredictable, untrustworthy, selfish, superstitious, greedy, and ultimately as impotent against evil as they are.
I shudder to think how many people over the centuries have mistakenly walked away from God because they (understandably) wanted nothing to do with the evil mystics who claimed to represent Him.
Marginalizing the Bible
But how did the Mystics get away with all this? Couldn’t the people they tried to rule over just read the Bible and see the Mystics for charlatans that they were?
Absolutely! And the Mystics knew it.
Historically, the biggest threat to Mystics is people losing their fear and gaining knowledge of the truth – that mystics are ruling them though nothing more than ecclesiastical smoke and mirrors. As such, the LAST thing they wanted people to do was learn the truth of the Bible.
So in typical Mystic fashion, they decreed that only their priests were capable of understanding and “properly interpreting” scripture. And forbade non-clergy from read the Bible.
It didn’t help that they only allowed the Bible to be translated into Latin, an academic language only taught to clergy. Did I mention that medieval mystics controlled higher education? Yep.
But once the Bible became available to the masses, they had new problems. The people could now read for themselves and see that most of what the Mystics dogma was unbiblical!
How do they get around the fact that the Bible BLATANTLY contradicts key Catholic doctrines?
They taught that the Bible was NOT the only source of Christian dogma!
They promoted the idea that the various religious traditions that they invented should be considered dogma too (they called them “Sacred Traditions”, to make them sound cooler).
They then decreed that their traditions superseded the Bible! So in any contradiction or conflict over doctrine, Mystic “tradition” overruled the Word of God!
Like I said, it was a great racket, perhaps the best one ever invented.
Working your way to Heaven
The commendation that Jesus gave to the church in Thyatira is a case study on why religion is so deceptive and destructive.
Jesus commended them for their good works. Which on the surface seems positive, and on the surface it is! Good works and charity are great things in and of themselves. But good works are an EFFECT of Salvation and the Church, not a CAUSE!
You aren’t saved because you do good works in God’s name, you do good works because you are saved! (Reversing causality is one of Satan’s favorite and most effective tactics).
Again, the doctrine of religious Mystics is that YOU have to do things to please God in order to be saved. And while that sounds great superficially, when you examine it, what it really means is that YOU are the reason you are saved, NOT God!
True Biblical/Christian Salvation is based on the work that God has done for you, not the other way around!
When this perversion of salvation is believed, it is a great victory for Satan because it is based on comparative thinking and religion. Both of which lead you away from God!
So am I saying Catholics aren’t saved?
No. I’m not saying that at all. I don’t have the ability, authority, or desire to say which specific peoples or groups are saved or not.
What I DO know is the only way to salivation is the process outlined in the Bible. If you are trying to be saved by any other method, you can be pretty sure it won’t work.
Clue to the end-time church(es)?
Now before we go on to the next letter, I need to point out a subtle, but very provocative structural change Jesus made tin the letter to Thyatira and the subsequent letters.
All seven letters end with a promise to “he who overcomes”, and a salutation (“he who has an ear to hear, let him hear”).
In the first three letters, the promise to the overcomer comes after the salutation, almost as if it’s a postscript or an afterthought. However in the last four letters, the promise comes BEFORE the salutation, giving the impression that there is still time to actively achieve the promise.
It’s interesting to note that the promises to the overcomers in the last four churches ALL reference events that will occur AFTER the 6th dispensation. Some Bible commentators have taken this to indicate that these four final churches will be in existence in some form at the end of this dispensation.
That’s not great news for Thyatira, since those who do not reject the doctrine of the mystics are promised inclusion in the “great tribulation” – the apocalyptic era that occurs between the 6th and 7th Dispensations.
I can imagine that any Catholic readers are uncomfortable (if not outright offended) by the last two posts. But if it makes you feel any better, the next letter would have to chronologically fit the Protestant church. And that letter is one of two of which Jesus has NOTHING positive to say. We’ll look at that church next time.
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