Saturday 4 June 2022

Faithful Constantine (CW36)

  World War 3 is at Hand

Then in a dream Christ visited Constantine and gave him a battle strategy that would help him win.
    Christ must have taught Constantine to be the light of the world in order to win the hearts of the Romans.
    For Christianity, he must trust the council of bishops (just like the Council of Jerusalem) to collect together the Holy Spirit inspired Scriptures, to formulate the Christian Creed of faith, acumen and doctrines.

A Saint more than Emperor
    The Orthodox Church regards Constantine as Saint Constantine the Great. His  Edict of Milan in 313 declared that Christians and all other religions would be tolerated throughout the empire, bringing an end to religious persecution. Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at the purported site of Jesus' tomb, which became the holiest site in Christendom. During his reign, he built many basilicas, repaired churches throughout the empire, relieved clergy of some taxes, and supported the Christian church financially.

Celebration of Christmas
    With the advice of the early fathers, Constantine set aside December 25 for the Christians to celebrate Christmas in remembrance of God's greatest love when the Word was made flesh at the birth of Jesus.

Sabbath on Sunday
   Some Jewish converts still continued with Saturday as the Sabbath (day of rest), but most Gentiles kept Sunday (the Lord's Day in Rev 1:8, the Day of the resurrection of Jesus) as their Sabbath.
    Again, from the early fathers, Constantine declared Sunday as the Sabbath for Christians to worship the Almighty God in unity worldwide.

Light of the World
  The Pagan Roman Senate saw the light of Jesus in Constantine and it was just a matter of time that they would embrace Christianity. At the death of Constantine in 337AD, there was already a high percentage of Christians in the Roman Empire.

Christianity the Official Religion
    In 380AD, Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. By then the councils of bishops had produced

1. the Apostles Creed to unite the faith of Christians,

2. the Septuagint, the Greek version of the 39 canon books of the OT,
Note All the OT books were written in Hebrew with the exception of the books of Daniel and Ezra, which were partially written in Aramaic. The seven Apocrypha books were written in Greek, so they were not canonised.
   According to tradition, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Greek Pharaoh of Egypt (285-246BC) sent seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel—from Jerusalem to Alexandria to translate the Tanakh from Biblical Hebrew into Koine Greek for the sake of the majority of Jews, who could no longer speak nor understand Hebrew.
    All Jewish historians such as Josephus recorded their writings in Greek for by the 3rd Century BC, Hebrew was almost a dead language and its use was only limited for religious ceremonies.

3. Identifying the 27 canon books of the New Testament in original Greek, took a long time for many more demonic and unscriptural writings (non-canon) were added to the fold.

Translation into Latin
The Bishop Damascus ordered Jerome to translate the 39 canon books of the OT (Septuagint) from Greek or OT in Hebrew to the Latin Vulgate, and also the 27 NT books originally written in Greek to the Latin Vulgate.
   Later, the churches in the Western Roman Empire used the Latin Vulgate with the Eastern Orthodox Empire keeping to the Greek translation.

Councils of Bishops
   All these councils of bishops were set up by God Himself to ensure the removal of wrong doctrines and heresies from His church, the Body of Christ. All those who reject the Apostles Creed, the canonical books as scriptures and the decisions of these councils of bishops have erred and may even be heretic.