Church History & Function #5 - The Roman Catholic Church

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

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   [Music] good morning everyone welcome to class I know we're a little late this morning sorry about that we're working on a couple of uh things I was trying to decide going back and forth about whether we should do this particular video that we're going to do this morning we're only going to do a part of it so it's only going to be it's going to be less than 45 minutes long but you're going to have to really pay attention and keep up um I'm just going to say a couple of the things they get into there's just two or three things I'll clarify after it's over that um you know I think they're getting off base on a little bit but we'll we'll clarify that but as for the the general history of the Roman Catholic church and the persecution that as it formed in the uh you know basically the early church began to get off in Rome and in that area the Catholic Church officially didn't form till 313 A.D but by once Constantine was in power but the the backsliding the falling away uh had already begun before Constantine but we're going to go through now let me just go ahead and warn you um as it gets into the persecution that the Roman Catholics perpetrated on true Christians Protestants it gets pretty graphic because uh it gets into the inquisitions and stuff so what I'm going to say is some of you at home that are going to be watching this this morning if you have your children running around you might want to get them away from the screen in their room uh playing because it's the Roman Catholic we have to show this because it says that she is drunk with the blood of the Saints and the martyrs of Jesus so it's it's vitally important that we just tell the whole truth about this so this is kind of an overview it's going to go from about you know just before 300 A.D all the way up into the the middle ages of the Roman Catholic church and then we will back up and talk about uh how John prophesied it so anyway pay close attention it's a good little video like I said I think they're they end up being tour heads at the end of this that's why we're not going to watch it all but uh the first part of it the basic history they did a pretty good job on it apart from a couple of things so anyway let's watch this this will give you an overview from about you know like I said about 250 uh 80 up until we see the Catholic Church really uh killing millions of people so anyway here we go to make the best use of Christianity that had spread throughout the whole region of Rome despite all sorts of persecution this was because he thought that Christianity could solidify his Empire by approving Christianity as a national

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   religion of Rome Constantine tried to seek the unity of the Roman empire under one religion [Music] thanks to Constantine's pro-christian policies many Believers of the polytheistic religions of Rome streamed into the Christian church this Titan Constantine's political grip and Christianity positioned itself as the religion of Rome expunging persecution and contempt it had received so far however the industry conversion they did without having any kind of understanding or faith rather produced an adverse effect the influx of pagan Customs into the church those who were tainted with polytheism of Rome looked as if they had converted but in actuality wasn't easy for them to get rid of the religious rights and institutions of worshiping the Sun the moon and the stars and various gods and goddesses which they had worshiped since their forefathers the church in Rome sought for solutions to just burden the pagans when they converted to Christianity it was to bring in things similar to the gods that the pagans had believed into the church they thought they would increase the number of pagan converts by doing that foreign for the Christian Bishops introduced with butt slight alterations into the Christian worship those rights and institutions by which formerly the Greeks and Romans and others had manifested their piety in reverence towards their imaginary deities supposing that the people would more readily Embrace Christianity if they perceive the rights handed down to them from their fathers still existing unchanged among the Christians [Music] Church in Rome that had been persecuted and despised wanted to put their Roots down in Rome as an approved religion even if they had to be mixed up with Roman polytheism it was because they wanted to keep their faith in Comfort being freed from the extreme pain of persecution to attract more pagans the church in Rome tried to christianize various kinds of pagan gods to suit the

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   Bible representative things among them was accepting Pagan customs of the sun god worship tradition the church in Rome identified Jesus with the sun god [Music] inside of the church was decorated with various kinds of sun images and the idea to worship the sun was established as if it were the truth of the church all judges City people and Craftsmen shall rest on the venerable day of the Sun Constantine's edict in 321 played an important role in making the sun god worship Faith to put its roots down in the church Constantine continued to identify the sun with the Christian God in some way but in 321 Constantine made the first day of the week a holiday he called it the venerable day of the Sun Dae the Christian Church took over many Pagan ideas and images from Sun worship for example came the celebration of Christ's birth on the 25th of December the birthday of the Sun God worship mingled in with Christianity the church in Rome was deprived of its purity of the early church and changed its appearance to the Roman Catholic Church thank you [Music] before the third century the church in Rome was one of many churches that were scattered all over the Roman Empire [Music] the reason the church in Rome later

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   became the head of all the churches of the world and dominated the Middle Ages was because it joined hands with emperor Constantine the result of Constantine's pro-christian policies many people who believe pagan gods converted to Christianity [Music] Consolidated Constantine's political position and there was no need for the church in Rome to refuse to convert because it was a good opportunity to secure its religious position [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] accepted Pagan idolatry and doctrines it was quickly secularized during the Middle Ages it was even hard to tell the difference between the church and the secular world the Catholic popped enthroned Kings and Kings protected the Catholic Church opposing the Catholic Church itself was rebelling against one's own country [Music] the pope wielded an absolute power we can see just how powerful he was through one incident the humiliation at canossa that happened during the time of Pope Gregory VII [Music] Gregory VII claimed that the Pope could not be judged by anyone on Earth and he could be thrown Emperors and kings an excommunicated Henry IV the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the course of the investiture controversy as Henry IV was faced with the crisis of being dethroned he went to the pope who

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