The End of History—Messiah Conspiracy

CHAPTER 10—Early Christian History Versus Catholicism

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 7:15-16, 33 AD

“[In] The Protestant Netherlands....During the 16th and the 17th Centuries, Amsterdam was known among Europe’s Jews as the new Jerusalem....Pre-Reformation semi-sectarian minority movements expressing millenarian yearnings had to remain underground. They were persecuted and suppressed by the Church in Rome....”¹ Regina Sharif, an accurate comment on the 1500’s

“ ‘...For if it had not been for the Christians, our remnant would surely have been destroyed, and Israel’s hope would have been extinguished amidst the Gentiles, who hate us because of our faith....But God, our Lord, has caused the Christian wise men to arise, who protect us in every generation.’ ”² Rabbi Emden, 1757


“...on the Continent of Europe small hidden Christian societies, who have held many of the opinions of the Anabaptists, have existed from the times of the apostles. In the sense of the direct transmission of Divine Truth, and the true nature of spiritual religion, it seems probable that these churches have a lineage or succession more ancient than that of the Roman Church.”³ Robert Barclay, 1876

“In 1208 a crusade was ordered by Pope Innocent III; a bloody war of extermination followed; scarcely paralleled in history....in 1229 the Inquisition was established and within a hundred years the Albigenses were utterly rooted out....”⁴

Henry Halley, 1965

The true Bible believing Christians mentioned above, along with the Huguenots and Anabaptists, the near equivalent of modern Evangelical Zionist Christians, aided and protected the Jews against Catholicism’s medieval persecutions when they were able. Philip Moore, 1996

10
EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORY
VERSUS CATHOLICISM

The secret events of true Christian history have been hidden from our eyes for centuries! Today, many have been led to believe that church history is synonymous with the record of the Roman Catholic Church. However, this is not true. In this chapter, we will differentiate between the two, separating the sheep from the goats in an objective manner, so as to inform those who are truly interested, of the actual events.
Many are now taught that “Christianity” (Roman Catholicism, which is not really New Testament Christianity) has in the past, persecuted the Jews. While it is true that Roman Catholicism has ruthlessly murdered Jews and Protestants, it is also true that true New Testament Christians have rescued and even given their lives to save Jews from Catholic persecution and Hitler’s Holocaust. These subjects will be covered in greater detail later in this book.
This chapter picks up where the last one left off and continues to illustrate the plight and persecution of true Christians throughout history, from the latter half of the first century until today.

The Jewish scholar, Hugh Schonfield, in his book, Saints Against Caesar, documents the persecution of Jewish Christians in the first century while Judaism was still a protected religion within Roman law. “But already in the first century it was Rabbinical Judaism which had taken the initiative in trying to force the Nazarenes out of the Synagogue. The Romans no doubt did not in Palestine distinguish between one brand of Judaism and another until they came to appreciate that there was a body of Christians still inside the Jewish Community....when the emperor decreed a search for members of the house of David, and started a persecution of the Christians. According to Hegesippus there were some Jewish heretics who denounced certain of the Nazarenes to the authorities.”⁵
Maurice Goguel, in his unsurpassed work, The Birth of Christianity, sheds even more light on the subject when he notes: “...right up to Paul’s trial, the Roman authorities in Palestine do not seem to have made any distinction between Jews and Christians. At first the same was true in the diaspora: for a long time Christians were confused with the Jews. But the latter went to work to clear up this confusion with such perseverance that we cannot help but think that they were working according to a set plan. So far as they succeeded they rendered the situation of the Christians in the empire very precarious. As soon as they ceased to enjoy the favoured treatment which had been awarded to Judaism, they found themselves without legal status, on the fringe of society and subject to the penalty of death....Jewish communities possessed wide powers of self-
government; they had rights of association and could exercise discipline over their members. Jews were exempt from all
participation in public worship; they could take oaths without calling upon the gods....All this was possible because Judaism was considered to be the national religion of a people who had been the friend and ally of the Roman people before they became vassals....the means used by the Jews [rabbinical leaders] to hinder the Christian mission were indirect. They made every effort to persuade the Roman authorities
that Christians were not Jews or had ceased to be so and consequently had no right to the privileges of Judaism.”⁶

Emperor Nero put Christians to death while mocking them. He had their bodies covered with animal skins, and confined them to areas where wild dogs would devour them. He nailed them to crosses and covered them with flammable materials, setting them on fire to light his garden by night.⁷
Emperor Domitian (AD 95) instituted the persecution in which Flavius Clemens perished. Thousands of Christians were murdered in Rome and Italy under his orders.
Under Emperor Trajan (98-117 AD), many Christians were murdered, among them Simeon (Jesus’ brother), who was crucified in 107. Ignatius of Antioch was thrown to wild beasts in 110 AD.
Concerning these horrible persecutions, Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, reported the progress of his extermination of Christians in a letter to Trajan, which we will partially reproduce for you here. Pliny wrote to Trajan: “...the method I have observed towards those who have been denounced to me as Christians, is this; I interrogated them whether they were Christians; if they confessed I repeated the question twice again, adding a threat of capital punishment; if they still persevered, I ordered them to be executed....Those who denied that they were Christians, or had ever been so, who repeated after me an invocation to the gods, and offered religious rites with wine and frankincense to your statue (which I had ordered to be brought for the purpose, together with those of the gods), and finally cursed the name of Christ (none of which, it is said, those who are really Christians can be forced into performing), I thought proper to discharge....I therefore thought it proper to adjourn all further proceedings in this affair, in order to consult with you. For the matter is well worth referring to you, especially considering the numbers endangered: persons of all ranks and ages, and of both sexes, are and will be involved in the prosecution. For this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread through the villages and the countryside. Nevertheless it seems still possible to check and cure it. The [pagan] temples, at least, which were once almost deserted, begin now to be frequented, and the sacred solemnities, after a long intermission, are again revived; while there is a general demand for sacrificial animals which for some time past have met with but few purchasers. From hence it is easy to imagine what numbers might be reclaimed from this error [believers in Jesus] if the door is left open for repentance.”⁸

Under Emperor Hadrian (117-138), Telephorus and many other well-known Christians suffered martyrdom. Under Emperor Antonius Pius (138-161), Polycarp and many others were martyred. Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180) persecuted Christians with the enthusiasm of Nero. Under his rule, many thousands were beheaded and thrown to the lions, including our beloved Justin Martyr.
Emperor Septimius Severus (193-211) persecuted Christians in Egypt and North Africa. He burned, crucified and beheaded many martyrs in Alexandria. Origen’s father, Leonidas, was one of his victims.
Under Emperor Maximin (235-238), many Christian leaders were executed. Emperor Decius (249-251) murdered untold numbers of Christians throughout Rome, North Africa, Egypt and Asia Minor. The famed Cyprian proclaimed, “The whole world is devastated.”⁹
Emperor Valerian (253-260) persecuted believers even more severely than his predecessor, Decius. Many Christian leaders were executed, including Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage. Emperor Diocletian (284-305) was known for the most severe persecution of Christians among the emperors.
Henry Halley notes that under Diocletian: “For ten years, Christians were hunted in cave and forest; they were burned, thrown to wild beasts, put to death by every torture cruelty could devise. It was a resolute, determined, systematic effort to abolish the Christian Name.”¹⁰

Under the city of Rome lies the remains of a people so persecuted, so horribly tortured for their belief, it would almost seem as if none could begin to truly understand their plight.¹¹ These were the first and second century Christians of Rome, who existed underground in secret tunnels called catacombs.
The catacombs of Rome are vast subterranean chambers, roughly eight feet wide by five feet high. They extend for hundreds of miles under the city. They were used by Christians for secret worship, burial and sanctuary from Rome’s persecution. There are an estimated seven million Christian graves and four miles of inscriptions to be found in these ancient galleries today.¹²

Constantine erroneously reported that “he saw in the sky, just above the setting sun, a vision of the cross, and above it the words, ‘In This sign Conquer.’ ”¹³
Obviously, no words or cross appeared in the sky telling him to fight. We believe Constantine used this as a ploy, which also illustrates that he never truly believed in Jesus.
Evangelist Ralph Woodrow defends this logic when he writes: “...if Constantine did have such a vision, are we to suppose its author was Jesus Christ? Would the Prince of Peace instruct a pagan emperor to make a military banner embodying the cross and to go forth conquering and killing in that sign?
The Roman Empire (of which Constantine became the head) has been described in the Scriptures as a ‘beast.’ Daniel saw four great beasts which represented four world empires—Babylon (a lion), Medo-Persia (a bear), Greece (a leopard), and Rome. The fourth beast, the Roman Empire, was so horrible that it was symbolized by a beast unlike any other (Daniel 7:1-8). We see no reason to suppose that Christ would tell Constantine to conquer with the sign of the cross to further the beast system of Rome!
But if the vision was not of God, how can we explain the conversion of Constantine? Actually, his conversion is to be seriously questioned. Even though he had much to do with the establishment of certain doctrines and customs within the church, the facts plainly show that he was not truly converted—not in the Biblical sense of the word. Historians admit that his conversion was ‘nominal, even by contemporary standards.’
Probably the most obvious indication that he was not truly converted may be seen from the fact that after his conversion, he committed several murders—including the murder of his own wife and son!....These things are summed up in the following words from The Catholic Encyclopedia: ‘Even after his conversion he caused the execution of his brother-in-law Licinius, and of the latter’s son, as well as of Crispus his own son by his first marriage, and of his wife Fausta....It has consequently been asserted that Constantine favored Christianity merely from political motives, and he has been regarded as an enlightened despot who made use of religion only to advance his policy.’
Such was the conclusion of the noted historian Durant regarding Constantine. ‘Was his conversion sincere—was it an act of religious belief, or a consummate stroke of political wisdom? Probably the latter...He seldom conformed to the ceremonial requirements of Christian worship. His letters to Christian bishops make it clear that he cared little for the theological differences that agitated Christendom—though he was willing to suppress dissent in the interests of imperial unity. Throughout his reign he treated the bishops as his political aids; he summoned them, presided over their councils, and agreed to enforce whatever opinion their majority should formulate. A real believer would have been a Christian first and a statesman afterward; with Constantine it was the reverse. Christianity was to him a means, not an end.’
Persecutions had not destroyed the Christian faith. Constantine knew this. Instead of the empire constantly being divided—with
pagans in conflict with Christians—why not take such steps as might
be necessary to mix both paganism and Christianity together, he reasoned, and thus bring a united force to the empire?....Though he had his statue removed from pagan temples and renounced the offering of sacrifices to himself, yet people continued to speak of the divinity of
the emperor. As pontifex maximus he continued to watch over the heathen worship and protect its rights. In dedicating Constantinople in 330 a ceremonial that was half pagan and half Christian was used....While professing to be a Christian, he continued to believe in pagan magic formulas for the protection of crops and the healing of disease. All of these things are pointed out in The Catholic Encyclopedia.”¹⁴
Richard Booker, author of the book, Jesus in the Feasts of Israel, insightfully pointed out: “In a.d. 312, the Emperor Constantine decreed that Christianity was to be the official religion of Rome. But, of course, no one can decree that another person become a Christian. Christianity is a matter of the heart. But the people had to outwardly obey even though inwardly most never actually accepted Jesus personally and experienced the new birth. Rome embraced Christianity, but the Romans themselves did not become Christians. People joined a religious system, but they never had a change on the inside.
During the next 1,200 years, many unbiblical practices were taught by the institutional church. Church leaders did not clearly teach the biblical declaration that salvation is based on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and the necessity of the new birth. The significance of the Feast of Passover was unknown to the common man. People sought salvation through religious rituals rather than through personal faith in Jesus Christ as their human Passover Lamb.”¹⁵

Constantine changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Halley documents: “He made the Christians’ day of Assembly, Sunday, a Rest Day; forbidding ordinary work....”¹⁶
The original meaning of the word “church” was a group of people who believed in Jesus as Messiah (ecclesia), who gathered together, both Jews and non-Jews, and met anywhere, usually in a house. The New Testament testifies: “The churches of Asia |greet| you. Aquila and Priscilla |greet| you much in the Lord, with the church that is in their house” (I Cor. 16:19 KJV).¹⁷
Constantine issued an edict¹⁸ for the construction of church buildings everywhere and set aside Sunday for Christians to rest. The New Testament never revoked Saturday as the biblical day of rest, something Christians and Jews should remember today. Sabbath (shabbat) is Hebrew for the “seventh day” and “rest.” Sunday is the first day.
In Jewish-Christian debates, rabbis sometimes say, “You Christians have the wrong day.” More correctly they should say, “Constantine has the wrong day.” According to history, Constantine does not speak for true Christians. Many of us go to church on
Sunday, to Messianic congregation service on Friday night/Saturday morning and trust the Lord every day of the week. Every day we trust that His will be done in our lives, that we meet the right people He has to bring our way so that we may tell them about Him. After all, what’s in a day? He made all seven. If you are a believer, I guess you have two in which to rest instead of one, thanks to Constantine.

Halley not only documents the changes Constantine made, but the period of time under Emperor Theodosius just after him: “Emperor Theodosius (a.d. 378-398), made Christianity the State Religion of the Roman Empire, and made Church Membership Compulsory....This Forced Conversion filled the Churches with Unregenerate People.
Not only so, Theodosius undertook the Forcible Suppression of all other Religions, and Prohibited Idol Worship. Under his decrees, Heathen Temples were torn down....Up to this time Conversion was Voluntary, a Genuine Change in Heart and Life.
But now the Military Spirit of Imperial Rome had entered the Church. The Church had Conquered the Roman Empire. But in reality the Roman Empire had Conquered the Church, by Making the Church over into the Image of the Roman Empire....[It] had become a Political Organization in the Spirit and Pattern of Imperial Rome....The Imperial [Roman Catholic] Church of the 4th and 5th centuries had become an entirely different institution from the persecuted [true believers’] church of the first three centuries....Ministers became Priests. The term ‘priest’ was not applied to Christian ministers before a.d. 200. It was borrowed from the Jewish system, and from the example of heathen priesthood. Leo I (440-61) prohibited priests from marrying, and Celibacy of priests became a law of the Roman Church....The Goths, Vandals and Huns who overthrew the Roman Empire accepted Christianity; but to a large extent their conversion was nominal and this further filled the Church with Pagan practices.”¹⁹
The devout and knowledgeable Henry Halley further notes: “The Church was founded, not as an institution of Authority to Force the Name and Teaching of Christ upon the world, but only as a Witness-Bearing institution to Christ, to hold Him before the people. Christ [Messiah] Himself, not the Church, is the Transforming Power in Human Life. But the Church [which] was founded in the Roman Empire, and gradually developed [for itself] a form of Government like the Political World in which it existed, become a vast Autocratic organization, ruled from the top.”²⁰

Throughout the next few pages, it will not be our intention to bore you with historical facts regarding a long line of popes and their deeds. However, a review of these facts is necessary to make clear that what has been labeled “Christian history,” was absolutely not!
While true Christians were underground²¹ and unable to surface until the fierce battles of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, it is also interesting to see how Roman Catholicism, which attempted to call itself “the only true church of Christianity,” developed through many of its leaders into a torture machine unsurpassed in human history. It was responsible for the murder of millions of Protestants and many tens of thousands of Jews.
I have found it an interesting pastime to read Regina Sharif’s book, Non-Jewish Zionism, which records four hundred years of Christian Zionism and Protestant Christian love of Jews. This hit like an avalanche in the sixteenth century, when Christians began to be
freed from the Catholic Church and permitted to openly study Bible prophecy! Even though Sharif’s book attempts to discourage Christian support for Israel, it is a wealth of information on the little studied,
little known subject of Christian colonial love and support (of hundreds of years past) for the Jews and their providential divine right to return to their state, the State of Israel, as prophesied in the Bible (Ezek. 36:24; Isa. 11:12. See our chapter 12, “Christian Zionists Past and Present” and chapter 14, “Zionists—Evangelical Christians—the Most Loyal to Israel”).

At any rate, let’s get through the Pope’s Catholic history and investigate the objections which are always mentioned when a contemporary born-again Christian starts talking about Jesus. Author Henry Halley starts by explaining to us: “The word ‘Pope’ means ‘Papa,’ ‘Father.’ At first it was applied to all Western Bishops. About a.d. 500 it began to be restricted to the Bishop of Rome, and soon, in common use, came to mean Universal Bishop.”
Halley notes that: “The Roman Catholic list of Popes includes the Bishops of Rome from the 1st century onward.”²² However, he documents: “...for 500 years Bishops of Rome were NOT Popes. The idea that the Bishop of Rome should have Authority over the Whole Church was a slow growth, bitterly contested at every step....”²³

We owe it to ourselves to briefly re-scan papal Roman Catholic history, from its early inception until now, and compare its councils, decrees and deeds to those individuals who claimed to be truly Christian, and illustrated this by their deeds of love and life-saving acts. These (born-again) Christians will be listed later in our chapter 12, “Christian Zionists Past and Present,”²⁴ which documents some of those who saved Jews from Hitler.
As we study, we will see a sharp contrast between the true believers and the evil events throughout history perpetrated by “traditionals” who claimed to be believers. Remember the words of Jesus: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matt. 7:15 KJV).
Jesus said that He would tell these people on Judgment Day: “...I never knew you....” (Matt. 7:23 KJV).

Simplicius was the Catholic Pope in 476, during the dissolution of the Western empire between the years 468 and 483. Once this occurred, the Popes were freed from civil authority. The many new kingdoms of barbarians into which the West was now divided, gave future Popes the opportunity for alliances which benefited themselves personally. Slowly, the Popes became the most powerful figures in the Western world.
Between 590 and 604, Gregory I, who is generally regarded as the first Pope, “established for himself complete control over the churches [Catholicism]^[25] of Italy, Spain, Gaul and England.” When the Patriarch of Constantinople called himself “Universal Bishop,” Gregory was tremendously irritated, considering this title vicious and haughty.

Pope Nicholas I was the first Pope to put a king’s crown on his head. In promoting his claim to universal legitimacy and authority in Catholicism with the Pope as “head of all”: “...he used with great effect the ‘PSEUDO-ISIDORIAN DECRETALS,’ a book that appeared about 857, containing documents that purported to be Letters and Decrees of Bishops and Councils of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, all tending to exalt the power of the Pope. They were Deliberate Forgeries and....Nicolas...Lied in stating that they had been kept in the archives of the Roman Church from ancient times....they served their purpose....‘The Papacy, which was the Growth of Several Centuries, was made to appear as something Complete and Unchangeable from the very Beginning.’ ‘The object was to Ante-Date by Five Centuries the Pope’s Temporal Power.’ ‘The Most Colossal Literary Fraud in History.’ ” ²⁶

The schism of Catholicism into Western and Eastern (Greek Orthodox) organizational spheres occurred in the year 869, due to Nicolas meddling and interfering with the Eastern Catholics. Nicolas “excommunicated” the “Patriarch” of Constantinople. This “Patriarch,” Photius, excommunicated Nicolas (laughable, isn’t it?). This led to a complete split by the year 1054.
When the empire was divided in 395, there began a bitter struggle for supreme power between the “Popes” of Western Rome and the “Patriarchs” of Constantinople in the East. After 869, their “Ecumenical Councils” were held separately, while the Popes continued their claim to be “Lord of all Catholicism.” The East avowed separation. From the point of separation, history witnesses the differences between these two massive organizational groups.
To this date, any difference in dogma or practice began with this series of schisms leading up to their complete separation. For example, Greek priests must be married to be ordained “Priests.” A Catholic must be unmarried. This explains why there are Western and Eastern (Greek) Catholics in existence today.

A GREEK TRIES TO TAKE CREDIT FOR WHAT WE OWE THE JEW, THOUGH TODAY, MOST ARE QUITE BASHFUL ABOUT BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MESSIAH

In the “Greek Orthodox Church,” there is much ceremony similar to Catholicism, which has its roots not in Hebraic tradition, but rather in heathenism. While reading the book, Understanding the Greek Orthodox Church, by Demetrios J. Constantelos, we were dismayed by the incredibly arrogant statement which read: “...Christianity became an ecumenical religion. As T. R. Glover has put it: ‘The chief contribution of the Greek was his demand for this very thing—that Christianity must be universal...the Greek really secured the triumph of Jesus....’ ”²⁷
Jesus in no way owes His triumph to the Greeks. He was a Jew and still is. It is the Jew who is responsible for the triumph of Jesus, His parents and lineage, and the entire scheme of Jewish prophecy in the Old Testament, which proclaimed the many hundreds of prophecies of the Messiah centuries before His birth. These prophecies were fulfilled later in Jesus’ life!
Jesus is a Jew who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah (John 4:25-26). The very word “Messiah” is anglicized Hebrew from which Christ (anglicized Greek for Christos) emerged in our present English New Testament.
Constantelos, in his section entitled “The Ancient Church,” goes on to claim: “The New Testament books themselves...were written in Greek....Christianity is Greek....”²⁸
It is interesting to note that, in reality, at least the first three Gospels of the New Testament were clearly written in Hebrew and
later translated into Greek. This is obvious from various Hebrew idioms found in the New Testament which do not make sense in Greek or any other language. For example, in Luke 9:51 it says He “set His face to go to Jerusalem” (NASB). This is not a Greek or English
idiom, but in Hebrew, even today, this is how you say, “He turned to
go to Jerusalem” in proper Hebrew.²⁹ See our appendix 1, “It’s All Hebrew to Me.” It will give you conclusive evidence that the original language of Jesus was Hebrew!
This modern Greek Orthodox writer also claims “Christianity is Greek.” Don’t we all wish we could give him the book, Christianity is Jewish, by Edith Schaeffer, or quote the words of Jesus to him, “salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22 KJV)? He also asserts that “Greek missionaries carried the Christian message.” However, we can be sure that they were not Greek “Orthodox”³⁰ but clearly evangelical.
It seems obvious that Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy (which split from Rome), the Mormons and many other cults and religions would like to lay claim to the original church in order to authenticate the traditions and dogmas of their particular group. This, above all, proves that those of us who follow the New Testament and its teachings are the true believers. Jesus said: “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:16 KJV).

THE TRUE NEW TESTAMENT BELIEVER IS IDENTIFIED
BECAUSE HE PUTS HIS MONEY WHERE HIS MOUTH IS! REMEMBER, JESUS SAID TALK IS CHEAP

Who saved the Jews from the Holocaust? Who is laboring to tell them Jesus is the Messiah out of love for their eternal future, as Jesus commanded? (Acts 1:8). Who has been supporting Israel? It is certainly not the Greek Orthodox, whom we have never seen evangelizing (telling the good news of Jesus to unbelievers). Is it any wonder? It is not part of their belief to evangelize, even though Jesus told us to do so in the New Testament.
The Baptists, the Church of God and various other evangelical New Testament believers are doing all of this, following the epistles of Paul and the words of Jesus. Thus, since they are using the Bible as their guide, we can see from their actions that they are authentic, as they follow the loving words of Jesus.
We want all of our friends to be in the Messianic Kingdom of Jesus when He returns. That is why we, as true believers, tell our friends and spread the message to invite Jesus into your heart (Rev. 3:20).³¹ We have had Greek, Anglican, Catholic, and Episcopalian officials and priests alike criticize us for talking with Jews and others about believing in Jesus.

An example of ecumenical indifference to following through and telling the Jews about Jesus can be seen in the recent article entitled, “Ads For Jesus Who’s Right the Bishop of Oxford or the American Based Organisation Jews for Jesus? Asks Steve Parish.” Steve Parish replies: “Now the brazen approach of Jews for Jesus is plainly not everybody’s cup of tea. To everything a season: maybe St Peter could get away with telling the whole house of Israel that ‘this Jesus you crucified has been made both Lord and Christ’....His [Bishop of Oxford] response to the advert is not to bemoan the lack of sensitivity, or its transatlantic hype, but to support Judaism in its own right and to discourage Jews from abandoning their historic faith to turn to Christianity. Christian organisations working amongst Jews should, he reckons, encourage Jews—especially those from ‘agnostic or non-observant homes’—to explore with a Rabbi the depth of Judaism. This is, he says, ‘surely basic to Christian integrity’....But it seems very strange for a Christian bishop to discourage anyone from becoming a Christian. Imagine the pearly gates, when Bishop Harries meets St. Peter, who persuaded 3000 Jews to turn to Christ in his first sermon. ‘Well, Peter, I think you should have first sent them all off to have a chat with their Rabbi...’ ”³²

A MAN WHO THINKS HE IS A CHRISTIAN VENTS
HIS HATRED ON JEWS AND OTHER BELIEVERS
WHO SHARE JESUS WITH THE HEBREWS

This same hypocrisy is echoed by the “Reverend” Dave Selzer, who, in a newspaper article entitled, “Jews for Jesus Perpetuate Myth,” made this unbiblical claim: “I know each Jew is complete in and of her/himself, and does not need Christianity or another religion to be ‘saved’. I know that to perpetuate this myth upon Jews is to continue the practice of persecution and to deny the realities of the Holocaust and of G-d working through the Chosen People of Israel even to this day....Jews for Jesus is another attempt to deny Jewish identity to Jews and another in a long series of persecutions by Christians of Jews. As a Christian I oppose the group and any other identifying themselves as ‘completed’ or ‘Messianic’ or ‘Christian’ Jew, and I urge others to do so as well.”³³
While the chaplain claims he is a Christian—“as a Christian I oppose”—we, as true believers in the Scriptures, note that if he holds this view, he cannot be a Christian. The heart of the New Testament teaches that the Gospel of Jesus as the Messiah is to be taken as good news to all the world, and especially to the Jews. As a matter of fact, it says, “to the Jew first.” Jesus presented His message to the most religious Jews of His day. Only later did the Greeks begin to express interest.
To oppose the preaching of the Gospel to the Jews is to slap Jesus in the face, and is a lie right out of the pit of Hell. Nevertheless, we ask that you pray for the chaplain, that he may come to the light of the New Testament, so that one day he will truly be a New Testament chaplain. Remember, Jesus said to pray for your enemies. Anyone who denounces Jesus’ message of love to His people, the Jews, is a definite enemy. Remember, Jesus said, “He that is not with me is against me....” (Matt. 12:30 KJV).

***
A MISSIONARY FRIEND JAILED

My friend, Mike Bentley, an Evangelical Baptist, was once jailed in Greece for passing out pamphlets which detailed New Testament verses describing how to receive Jesus as Savior, in Greek. When his release was secured (it was not easy but Michael had a “friend,” a Christian, who had a “friend”...), he told the Greek police, “It was only Christian literature.” They told him, “Don’t ever do that again.” Apparently, the Orthodox fear³⁴ the real Jesus of the New Testament; otherwise, such anti-missionary laws would not exist.³⁵
Michael’s high-ranking friend told him, “If I had not insisted, they would have thrown the key away and no one would have ever known what had happened to you.” So much for the Greek Orthodox “monopoly” on what is Christian. It speaks for itself. In our opinion, it is a head philosophy of investigation and ceremony, rather than a secure faith of the heart based on Jesus and the New Testament!

“Constantine....In the course of his wars with competitors, to establish himself on the throne, on the eve of the battle of Milvain Bridge, just outside Rome (October 27, a.d. 312) [said], he saw in the sky, just above the setting sun, a vision of the Cross, and above it the words, ‘In This Sign Conquer.’ ”³⁶ Henry H. Halley

I know many may raise an eyebrow over our use of the word, underground.³⁸ Therefore, I will present some incredible documentation which may startle you, if not, it will certainly enrich your understanding of true history; events which many may not want you to know about.
Regina Sharif is no friend of Christians who support Israel,³⁹ and thus a witness of the opposition. She provides insight into the existence of the underground and its adherents’ Zionist yearnings.
Incredibly, these true Christians were forced underground due to their millennial hope of the Second Coming of the Messiah. This was contrary to the doctrine of Augustine. This man, one of the official authorities of Catholicism, reinterpreted the Second Coming millennial promise as a “spiritual state,” not a real event. He did this because he felt God was “finished with Israel!” True Christians, however, realizing the relevance of the Bible’s prophecies of Jesus’ return and the return of the Jew to Israel, believed otherwise and were persecuted for this belief!
In the section entitled, “Jewish Restoration and Christian Millenarianism,” from Sharif’s book, Non-Jewish Zionism, she wrote: “One of the most definite effects of the Protestant Reformation was the emerging interest in the fulfillment of Biblical prophecies concerning the End of Time. The core of millenarianism was the belief in the Second Coming of Christ whose return would establish God’s Kingdom on earth, which was to last for 1,000 years (that is, a millennium). Millenarians regarded the future of the Jewish people as an important element in the events to precede the End of Time. In fact, the literal interpretation of the apocalyptic writings in the Bible led them to conclude that the Millennium was to be heralded by the physical Restoration of the Jews as a nation (Israel) to Palestine....After Christianity [Catholicism] became the official religion of the Roman empire in AD 380....Augustine in his City of God seemed to have settled this problem [of millennial teachings], at least until the 16th Century. Using the allegorical methodology, Augustine interpreted the Millennium as a spiritual state....Pre-Reformation semi-sectarian minority movements expressing millenarian yearnings had to remain underground. They were persecuted and suppressed by the Church in Rome....It [millenarianism] continued to find followers in every period of history after the Reformation and finally culminated in 20th Century American fundamentalism which insists that the state of Israel presents the literal fulfillment of prophecy in modern history.”⁴⁰

MORE EVIDENCE—ANABAPTIST
CHURCHES FROM THE DAYS OF THE APOSTLES
EVADE ROME BY HIDING UNDERGROUND

Quite a piece of evidence! Our second piece of evidence brings to mind the line used by Ronald Reagan to announce his second Presidential term. “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” This evidence will show, to our twentieth century eyes, that still another unbiased historical figure provides critical information about the existence of these true Christian churches.
John T. Christian shows that these churches have existed during the entire Christian era and even before the Roman Catholic Church, which many people are taught was the first and only church until the Reformation. In Christian’s book, History of the Baptists, we read: “Robert Barclay, a Quaker, who wrote largely upon this subject...says of the Baptists: We shall afterwards show the rise of the Anabaptists took place prior to the Reformation of the Church of England, and
there are also reasons for believing that on the Continent of Europe small hidden Christian societies, who have held many of the opinions of the Anabaptists, have existed from the times of the apostles. In the sense of the direct transmission of Divine Truth, and the true nature of spiritual religion, it seems probable that these churches have a lineage or succession more ancient than that of the Roman Church (Barclay, The Inner Life of the Societies of the Commonwealth, 11, 12. London, 1876)....Cardinal Hosius, a member of the Council of Trent, A.D. 1560, in a statement often quoted, says: If the truth of religion were to be judged by the readiness and boldness of which a man of any sect shows in suffering, then the opinion and persuasion of no sect can be truer and surer than that of the Anabaptists since there have been none for these twelve hundred years past, that have been more generally punished or that have more cheerfully and steadfastly undergone, and even offered themselves to the most cruel sorts of punishment than these people (Hosius, Letters Apud Opera, 112-113. Baptist Magazine CVIII, 278. May, 1826).
That Cardinal Hosius dated the history of the Baptists back twelve hundred years^[41]...for in yet another place the Cardinal says: The Anabaptists are a pernicious sect. Of which kind the Waldensian brethren seem to have been, although some of them lately, as they testify in their apology, declare that they will no longer re-baptize, as was their former custom; nevertheless, it is certain that many of them retain their custom, and have united with the Anabaptists (Hosius, Works of the Heresæics of our Times, Bk. I. 431. Ed. 1584).
From any standpoint that this Roman Catholic testimony is viewed it is of great importance. The Roman Catholics were in active opposition to the Baptists, through the Inquisition they had been dealing with them for some centuries, they had every avenue of information, they had spared no means to inform themselves, and, consequently, were accurately conversant with the facts. These powerful testimonies to the antiquity of the Baptists are peculiarly weighty. The Baptists were no novelty to the Roman Catholics of the Reformation period.”⁴²

***
BACK TO THE CRIMES OF THE POPES

Pope Sergius III (904-911) is reported to have had a mistress, Marozia, who “filled the papal chair with her illegitimate children.” Bible scholar Henry Halley documents the fact that this era of the papacy is “called in history The Rule of the Harlots (904-963).”
Halley also tells us Anastasius was made Pope by Theodora, Marozia’s mother, for reasons of passion, only to be smothered to death by Marozia. After this, Marozia made both Leo IV (928-929) and Steven VII (929-931) Pope. Finally, John XI (931-936), her very own illegitimate son, was appointed “Pope,” along with her other illegitimate sons. They were Leo VII (936-939), Steven VIII (939-942), Martin III (942-946), and Agapetus II (946-955).
Pope John XII (955-963), Marozia’s grandson, raped virgins, lived with his father’s mistress and was killed one day by the husband of the woman with whom he was sleeping!
Pope Boniface VII (984-985) murdered Pope John XIV and lived on stolen money. “The Bishop of Orleans, referring to John XII, Leo VIII and Boniface VII, called them ‘monsters of guilt, reeking in blood and filth....’ ”
Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), attempted to straighten out Roman Catholicism’s simony problem. Simony is the purchase of church offices, such as bishop or priest, with money. At the time, Roman Catholicism owned a large share of all properties. Gregory was very upset that anyone, regardless of qualification, could purchase such offices. This caused Gregory great bitterness toward Henry IV, Emperor of Germany, who deposed Gregory. After this, Gregory deposed Henry, which caused war to follow. In the end, Gregory was driven out of Rome, calling himself “Overlord of Kings and Princes.”
Popes Victor III, Urban II and Pascal II (1086-1118) kept the war going with the German Emperor. Pope Alexander III (1159-1181) renewed the war, and terrible slaughters resulted between German and papal armies. In the end, Alexander III was also driven from Rome.

Innocent III (1198-1216) was the “most powerful of all the Popes.” He claimed “to be ‘Vicar of Christ,’ ” and to be “Supreme Sovereign over the Church and the World.” Innocent “claimed the right to depose Kings and Princes,” and said, “All things on earth and in heaven and in hell are subject to the Vicar of Christ,” i.e., himself.
It was under Innocent that transubstantiation (the belief that the symbolic bread and wine became the body and blood of Jesus) was decreed. This man confirmed auricular confession and ordered two vicious crusades. He declared papal infallibility, condemned the Magna Carta (“great charter” of English liberties; the guide used to draft the U.S. Constitution) and forbade vernacular reading of the Bible. Innocent ordered that all “heretics” (those who did not agree with his guidelines of “faith”) be exterminated. Innocent instituted the Inquisition, which he called the “Holy Office.” This was Catholicism’s means of detecting and murdering the “heretics,” who were Jews and Protestant Christians. Scholar Henry Halley says of this monstrous creature: “More Blood was Shed under his direction, and that of his immediate successors, than in any other period...except in the Papacy’s effort to Crush the Reformation [Protestant Christian Reformers and their flocks which numbered in the millions]^[43] in the 16th and 17th centuries.”
Pope Innocent ordered the massacre of the Albigenses (Protestant Christians of Albi). Later, this “Inquisition Office” would be used to effect the death of over 900,000 additional Protestants in a war that lasted thirty years, between 1540 and 1570. This was “the Pope’s war for the extermination of the Waldenses [biblical Christians of France].”^[44]
Our wise and astute friend, Henry Halley, asks us to: “Think of Monks and Priests, in holy garments, directing, with Heartless Cruelty and Inhuman Brutality, the work of Torturing and Burning alive Innocent Men and Women, and doing it in the Name of Christ, by the direct order of the ‘Vicar of Christ.’
The Inquisition was the Most Infamous and Devilish Thing in Human History. It was devised by Popes, and used by them for 500 years, to Maintain their Power. For its record none of the subsequent line of ‘Holy’ and ‘Infallible’ Popes have ever apologized.”
As Evangelical Christians of the 1990’s, we too ask Roman Catholicism and its present leaders, “Where is your apology?” Though it will not bring back the millions of our brothers and sisters who are presently with the Lord, it would be only decent to render an acknowledgment and apology for Catholicism’s history of crimes.

THE CRIMES OF THE POPES, PART III

Boniface VIII (1294-1303), in his “Unam Sanctam,” declared salvation was not possible if you were not subject to the “Roman Pontiff.” Dante, who visited the Vatican while Boniface was in office, took note of his horrible corruptions along with Nicolas II and Clement V, calling the Vatican a “Sewer of Corruption.”
John XXIII (1410-1415) “lived in adultery with his brother’s wife,” and “sold Cardinalates to children of wealthy families; and openly denied the future life.”
Nicolas V (1447-1455) “authorized the King of Portugal to war on African peoples, take their property and enslave people.”
Sixtus IV (1471-1484) “decreed that money would deliver souls from Purgatory,” a temporary Hell that does not exist, and “was implicated in a plot to murder Lorenzo de Medici, and others who opposed his policies.” Sixtus sanctioned the Spanish Inquisition—the murder and torture of innocents, the likes few have known.
Innocent VIII (1484-1492) “multiplied church offices, and sold them for vast sums of money.” He appointed Thomas of Torquemada the Inquisitor General of Spain, who then brutally murdered untold numbers of Christians. Innocent ordered that all rulers deliver “heretics” (believers) to him. He also “decreed the extermination of the Waldenses, and sent an army against them.”
Alexander VI (1492-1503) has been called “the most corrupt of the Renaissance Popes.” He bought the papacy, appointed various new Cardinals for monetary gain, openly had many illegitimate children, whom he later appointed to high church offices, and together, they murdered anyone who stood in the way.
Leo X (1513-1521) offered ecclesiastical offices and “church” honors for sale. Creating many new offices: “He appointed Cardinals as young as 7. He was in endless negotiations with kings and princes, jockeying for secular power....” Leo supported Unam Sanctam, whereby it is claimed that if you are not Roman Catholic, you are not saved. He also sold indulgences (certificates of forgiveness) and “declared burning of heretics a divine appointment.”
Pope Paul III (1534-1549) produced numerous illegitimate children, considered himself an enemy of Protestants and “offered Charles V an army to exterminate them.”⁴⁵

Under Pope Julius III (1550-55), Michael Servetus was burned as a Judaizer. Francis Kett, who wrote of the restoration of the Jews to Israel, was burned under Sixtus V (1585-90).
The views of Paul Felgenhauer, Holger Paulli and Anders Pederson Kempe, seemingly unknown to modern history, were concerned with support for the Jews and their right to return to Israel. Kempe, of Sweden, rightly called Rome: “...the Grandmother of all fornication...[for believing] that the Jews were forever disinherited and rejected by God....”⁴⁶
Regina Sharif documents: “In 1655, Paul Felgenhauer (1593-1677) published his Good News for Israel in which he maintained that the Second Coming of Christ and the arrival of the Jewish Messiah were one and the same event. The sign that was to announce the
advent of this Judaeo-Christian Messiah would be, in typical millenarian fashion, ‘the permanent return of the Jews to their own country eternally bestowed upon them by God through his unqualified promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’....In Denmark, Holger Paulli called upon Europe’s monarchs to undertake a new crusade, this time
to liberate Palestine and Jerusalem from the infidel in order to settle the original and rightful heirs, the Jews. In 1696 he submitted a most detailed plan to William III of England, appealing to the English king
to re-conquer Palestine for the Jews so that they might re-establish a state of their own....In Sweden, Anders Pederson Kempe (1622-89), an ex-army officer turned theologian, was forced to leave Stockholm because of his role in the spreading of German messianism. He settled near Hamburg where in 1688 he published his own Israel’s Good
News, a violent attack^[47] on traditional Christendom [Catholicism, which certainly needed straightening out at that time on its anti-Jewish stance]: ‘You heathen Christians, you let yourselves be persuaded by false teachers, especially the Grandmother of all fornication, Rome, to believe that the Jews were forever disinherited and rejected by God and that you were now the rightful Christian Israel, to possess the Land of Canaan forever.’ (Rengstorf and Kortzfleisch, op. cit., p. 63.)....A voluminous religious literature on the role and the destiny of the Jews spread rapidly during the 17th Century and, by its millenarian nature, never fell out of vogue. Many millenarians were rebuked, persecuted and sometimes even executed for their heretical beliefs.”⁴⁸

TRUE BELIEVERS (AND THEIR DESCENDANTS)⁴⁹ WHO SAVED JEWS ARE NOT LIABLE FOR CATHOLICISM’S PERSECUTION—RABBIS SHOULD LEARN WHY!

The reason we mention all these true Christians is to show that Catholicism was not the monopoly of the time, though it tried to establish itself as one by executing “heretics.” These so-called heretics were millennial Zionists who supported the Jews and their right to life, liberty and freedom, and especially their God-given sovereignty to return to their land, as the Christian Bible predicted.
So, it is important for us to realize that the Catholic “Church” not only persecuted Jews but also those who loved them and anyone who dared to differ from the doctrines of Catholicism. Thus, true Christians who love the Jewish people are not responsible in any way for their persecution in the name of Catholicism. Some gave their lives to save the Jewish people from these horrors. Today, when a rabbi tells you, “Don’t talk about Jesus to the Jewish people, we’ve heard enough from the Crusades,” you can confidently give him this book saying, “We have too, and we have saved some of you from the Crusades.” Please, won’t you hear our side, as documented by this rare list of Christian heroes of the Holocaust and Christian Zionists who saved Jews from the Spanish king and Catholic Church⁵⁰ in the Netherlands? Israel has recognized righteous Gentiles who saved Jews from the Holocaust; won’t you read this documentation of the reason? If so, thank you!

While persecuting Christians who loved Jews, the Catholic Church also persecuted Jews because they mentioned the name of Jesus in the Talmud. The following decree by Polish rabbis in 1631 illustrates this point: “ ‘We forbid under penalty of the great anathema the publishing of anything in new editions of the Mishnah or the Gemara which refers to Jesus of Nazareth. Should this order not be scrupulously obeyed...that will bring still greater suffering upon us than in the past.’ ”⁵¹
This shows that anyone who denies the existence of Jesus’ name in the rabbinical literature is in error. This also exposes the Catholics for their lack of belief in Jesus’ command to “love thy neighbor,” and exposes their unwarranted persecutions. The Jewish scholar, Pinchas Lapide, documents: “In the period from the fourth to the sixteenth century no fewer than 106 popes and 92 Church councils issued anti-Jewish laws and regulations.”⁵²

Just to be sure that God was not on the side of the “Church” of Rome, we note that all of their persecution did not stop the true followers of Jesus from expressing love and anticipation of a future reborn State of Israel. As the Protestant faith spread, many true believers began reviving the millennial hope that was considered heresy and punishable by death! Incredibly, in light of the rebirth of Israel in 1948, we read of the testimony of two seventeenth century scientists. Sharif notes: “Isaac Newton in his Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, first published five years after his death, concluded that the Jews will indeed return to their homeland: ‘The manner I know not. Let time be the interpreter’....Another scientist who was a strong believer in the messianic mission of the Jewish people was the chemist and discoverer of oxygen, Joseph Priestley....[he] remained convinced that Judaism and Christianity were complementary and hence conversion to Christianity would be simple. His plea to the Jews to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah was therefore coupled with his prayer that the God of Heaven, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob whom we Christians as well as you worship, may be graciously pleased to put an end to your suffering, gathering you from all nations, resettle you in your own country, the land of Canaan and make you the most illustrious...of all nations on the earth.”⁵³

Urban VIII (1623-44), aided by the Jesuits, “blotted out Protestants in Bohemia.” Pope Clement XI (1700-21) “declared that kings reign only with his sanction [and]^[54] issued a bull against Bible reading.”
Pope Pius VII (1800-20) “issued a bull against Bible societies.” Pope Leo XII (1821-29) condemned religious freedom, translations of the Bible, and announced that: “Everyone separated from the Roman Catholic Church...has no part in eternal life.” Pope Pius VIII (1829-30) also denounced Bible societies.
Gregory XVI (1831-46) also condemned Bible societies. Pope Pius IX (1846-78) decreed the deity of Mary and the Immaculate Conception, denounced Bible societies, and “declared that Protestantism is ‘No Form of the Christian Religion.’ ”
Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) announced that “he holds on this earth the Place of Almighty God.” He declared Protestants “enemies of the Christian name.”
Pope Pius X (1903-1914) “denounced leaders of the Reformation as ‘enemies of the Cross of Christ.’ ”
In 1928, Pope Pius XI (1922-1939) “re-affirmed the Roman Catholic Church to be the only Church of Christ, and the re-union of Christendom impossible except by submission to Rome.”
The last few Popes of this century have abstained from such harsh criticism of believers, perhaps because there are presently so many of them and they cannot do anything about it. Crusades, after all, are not legal today, are they? Having lost their political power, they are in dismay.

These true Christians dared to be different and Catholicism’s penalty was death. Henry Halley documents the terrible mass persecution and torture when he tells us that the: “Albigenses or Carthari. In Southern France, Northern Spain and Northern Italy. Preached against the...worship of saints and images...[they] made great use of the Scriptures....By 1167 they embraced possibly a majority of the population of South France....In 1208 a crusade was ordered by Pope Innocent III; a bloody war of extermination followed; scarcely paralleled in history...in 1229 the Inquisition was established and within a hundred years the Albigenses were utterly rooted out.”⁵⁵
The unchallenged historical volume, Cyclopædia of Universal History, by John Clark Ridpath, documents: “...the religio-civil war with the Albigenses broke out in the south of France. From the year 1209 to 1218, the best portions of the kingdom were ravaged with a ferocity that would have done credit to the Mamelukes. The harmless fathers of French protestantism were made to feel how cruel a thing the sword is when backed by religious intolerance....Louis VIII., who, acting under the instigation of the Pope, renewed the war against the Albigenses....to fill up the cup of bitterness which the papal party now mixed for the heretics to drink, the Inquisition, with its Chamber of Horror, was organized to complete their extermination. Notwithstanding the fierce persecutions to which these early protestants were subjected, the name of the Albigensian sect survived to the close of the thirteenth century, and even after the beginning of the fourteenth, adherents of the party were still found, not only in Southern France, but also in secluded parts of Italy and Spain.”⁵⁶

History has almost forgotten that the Waldenses in southern France and northern Italy were another Protestant group of Bible believers who were persecuted, tormented and murdered during the Inquisition. Waldo, its leader, rejected Catholic Mass and Purgatory. He taught that the Bible was the sole rule for our lives.
John Wycliff, who was a teacher in Oxford, England, exposed the priesthood and opposed Popes, Cardinals, and monks. He also showed that auricular confession was unbiblical. His followers were called Lollards, and today in England, some tours detail their horrible persecution. One stop on these tours is a place called Lollard’s Pit, where Lollards were thrown to their death in untold numbers.
John Huss, rector of the University of Prague, Bohemia, also dismissed Purgatory and the worship of saints, which is, of course, condemned by the New Testament. For his true faith in Jesus, and rejection of the doctrines of Catholicism, he was burned at the stake, and those of his followers, who comprised the majority of Bohemia, suffered near extermination at the hands of the Pope, who ordered a crusade.
Savonarola of Florence, Italy, who was said to have “Preached, like a Hebrew prophet,”⁵⁷ was murdered by hanging and burned in the square of Florence before the time of Luther.⁵⁸

The Protestant Reformation was brought about by “the direct contact of the mind with the Scriptures.”⁵⁹ Harnack remarked: “The Greek Church is Primitive Christianity, plus Greek and Oriental Paganism. The Roman Catholic Church is Primitive Christianity plus Greek and Roman Paganism.^[60] The Protestant Church is an effort to Restore Primitive Christianity Free from All Paganism.”⁶¹
If you are asking yourself, “What is Protestant?” and “What are we protesting against?”, it all goes back to 1529 at the Diet of Spires. There, Roman Catholics ruled that Catholicism could be taught in Lutheran states, while forbidding Lutheran teachings in Catholic states. To this, the Lutheran princes made formal protest, and thus they: “...henceforth were known as ‘Protestants.’ The name, originally applied to Lutherans, has now come to be applied in popular use, to those protesting against Papal Usurpation—including all Evangelical Christian Bodies.”⁶²
It is clear from this history lesson that the body of Catholicism did not want to tolerate freedom of religion among individuals. According to the papacy, it was wrong to fight for the right to read the Bible and believe in its fundamentals. Does this sound familiar?
Presently, in U.S. courts, the ACLU and other anti-Democratic and anti-biblical⁶³ organizations are fighting the rights of Christians to pray and read their Bibles in school. They are challenged by the Christian organization, The American Center for Law and Justice,⁶⁴ which we believe we should all support to preserve our freedom, while we still have a chance. If we allow the Bible to be removed from our national life, history could repeat itself.

What happened when the Bible was taken from us in the past? How was it taken? Who took it? Obviously those who did not like it, because it afforded freedom, dignity and self-rule.
The Anabaptists were a true Bible-reading group of believers. Henry Halley beautifully expounds on our point in connection with the Anabaptists when he documents: “In the Netherlands the Reformation was received early...Anabaptists were already numerous. Between 1513 and 1531 there were issued 25 different translations of the Bible in Dutch, Flemish and French. The Netherlands were a part of the dominion of Charles V. In 1522 he established the Inquisition, and ordered all Lutheran writings to be burned. In 1525 prohibited religious meetings in which the Bible would be read. 1546 prohibited the printing or possession of the Bible, either vulgate or translation. 1535 decreed ‘death by fire’ for Anabaptists. Philip II (1566-98), successor to Charles V, re-issued the edicts of his father, and with Jesuit help carried on the persecution with still greater fury. By one sentence of the Inquisition the whole population was condemned to death, and under Charles V and Philip II more than 100,000 were massacred with unbelievable brutality. Some were chained to a stake near the fire and slowly roasted to death; some were thrown into dungeons, scourged, tortured on the rack, before being burned. Women were buried alive, pressed into coffins too small, trampled down with the feet of the executioner. Protestants of Netherlands, after incredible suffering, in 1609, won their independence; Holland, on the North became Protestant; Belgium, on the South, Roman Catholic. Holland was the first country to adopt public schools supported by taxation, and to legalize principles of religious toleration and freedom of the press.”⁶⁵

***

John Ridpath, in his unsurpassed Cyclopædia of Universal History, also documents: “...Charles V...spared no effort to check and repress the religious revolution which he saw going on in the Netherlands. Against the Protestant leaders he launched one edict after another, and finally, in hope of extirpating the heresy, established the Inquisition in Flanders. Before the death of Charles, the fangs of persecution had already been fixed in Holland, and several thousand of her people had been put to death on account of their religious belief....Prince William of Orange....was amazed and horrified, while residing at the French court, to hear coolly discussed the various measures which the princes of the Catholic world were then debating for the destruction of the Protestants....letters followed from Philip ordering the Inquisition, backed by the government, to proceed with all rigor against the heretics, and declaring that though a hundred thousand lives all his own should perish, he would not hesitate in the work of upholding and reëstablishing the ancient faith in all his dominions.
Now it was, however, that William of Orange, who at this time held the office of governor of Holland and Zealand, supported by a league of others, like-minded with himself, interposed to prevent the work of the Inquisition. He declared that his countrymen should not be put to death on account of their religious opinions. For the moment the situation was critical and full of peril. Many of the Flemings and Hollanders fled. Thirty thousand of them, the best artisans and merchants in Europe, left....”⁶⁶

The Huguenots were a compassionate Christian people of France. They loved to read the Bible and share their faith. Many of them were Zionist, recognizing the prophecies of the Bible. They realized the Jews would return to Israel before Jesus would return, thus, the reason for their leaders’ encouraging the restoration of Palestine as the Jewish national homeland for Israel. This was advocated by Isaac de La Peyrere and Philippe Gentil de Langallerie.
In the 1550’s, their numbers had swollen to nearly one-half million. Henry Halley tells us: “By 1559 there were about 400,000 Protestants. They were called ‘Huguenots.’ Their earnest piety and pure lives were in striking contrast to the scandalous lives of the
Roman clergy. In 1557 Pope Pius urged their extermination. The king issued a decree for their massacre, and ordered all loyal subjects to help in hunting them out....on the night of August 24, 1572, 70,000 Huguenots, including most of their leaders, were Massacred. There was great rejoicing in Rome. The Pope and his College of Cardinals went, in solemn procession, to the Church of San Marco, and ordered the Te Deum to be sung in thanksgiving. The Pope struck a medal^[67] in commemoration of the Massacre; and sent a Cardinal to Paris to bear the King and Queen-Mother the Congratulations of Pope and Cardinals....Following St. Bartholomew’s Massacre the Huguenots united and armed for resistance; till finally, in 1598, by the Edict of Nantes, they were granted freedom of conscience and worship. Pope Clement VIII called the Toleration Edict of Nantes a ‘cursed thing’; and after years of underground work by the Jesuits, the Edict was Revoked, (1685)....”⁶⁸

THE FORGOTTEN HUGUENOT HOLOCAUST—ONE-HALF
MILLION TRUE CHRISTIAN MEN, WOMEN AND
CHILDREN SLAUGHTERED BY FRENCH DRAGOONS

John Ridpath further documents that when it was: “...agreed that the whole scheme of toleration, which had been devised and
proclaimed in April of 1598 by Henry of Navarre as the fundamental condition of the religious peace of France, should be reversed and abrogated, to the end that Catholic absolutism might be reëstablished throughout the kingdom.
“After certain prepatory steps, such as local persecutions of the Huguenots, the shutting up of their churches in various places, and
their expulsion from public offices, an edict was finally prepared for
the purpose of destroying French Protestantism at a single stroke. All Protestants were ordered to abjure their religion and return to the communion of Rome under penalty of having their property
confiscated and themselves put beyond the protection of the law. Nor was the measure coupled with the poor provision for voluntary exile. Instead of permitting the Huguenots to go into self-banishment in foreign lands the most stringent orders were given to prevent their escape from France. It was decreed that any who should be caught in such an attempt should be sent to the galleys. Troops of dragoons were then sent into the districts where the Huguenots lived and a persecution was organized against them which has been made perpetually infamous in history under the name of the Dragonade. The minister Louvois declared the will of the king to be that the greatest rigor should be visited on those who would not adopt his religion, and that such stupid vanity on the part of the Huguenots should be pursued to the last extremity.
“The king’s dragoons were accordingly ordered to quarter at will in the houses of those who refused to give up the religion in which they had been nurtured. One cruelty succeeded another. Menace was followed by imprisonment, imprisonment by isolated murders, and these by general and brutal massacres. The Huguenot peasants were hunted into the woods like wild beasts and were shot down or tortured at the caprice of their persecutors. Neither the decrepitude of old age nor the pleading weakness of infancy stirred any remorse in the breasts of the bloody butchers who went about cutting down all ages, sexes, and conditions....The regions where the Huguenot population predominated were reduced to a desolation, and it is estimated that France by her frightful barbarity to her own people lost fully half a million of her most industrious inhabitants....”⁶⁹

Artist Jorg Breu the Elder’s sixteenth century
woodcut of indulgence sales.



Inquisition Torture room, by seventeenth and
eighteenth century artist, Picart.

The persecution of the Huguenots during the Inquisition.

THE JEWISH CONSEQUENCE OF THE LOSS
OF PROTESTANTS AND HUGUENOTS

Concerning what befell these precious Huguenots, is it any wonder why so few true Christians were able to help the Jews in times of persecution, as the Bible commands? Every time there arose a sizable number of true believers, the Roman Catholics seem to have come in and wiped them out. As for the Huguenots’ pro-Jewish stance, Regina Sharif writes: “The Protestant Netherlands, under the ruling House of Nassau-Orange, was a case in point. During the 16th and the 17th Centuries, Amsterdam was known among Europe’s Jews as the new Jerusalem....In the Calvinist Netherlands, Zionist ideas were especially entrenched in popular feeling. Spanish Jews fleeing from the Inquisition had found a secure haven in the Netherlands and were welcomed as allies against the common enemy of the Spanish King and the Catholic Church....France at the time also had its share of millenarian Zionists, most notably among the Huguenots in the southern regions. Their distinguished representative was Isaac de La Peyrere (1594-1676) who wrote Rappel des Juifs. De la Peyrere called for the Restoration of Israel as the Jewish nation in the Holy Land, despite its unconverted state. He sent his appeal to the French monarch, but his treatise was only allowed to appear in print nearly two centuries later after Napoleon had called for the assembling of a Jewish Sanhedrim in May 1806. The author, nevertheless, remained an influential scholar. He was even appointed French ambassador to Denmark in 1644. Another Frenchman, Philippe Gentil de Langallerie (1656-1717), did not fare so well. When he presented his plan for Jewish settlement in Palestine, offering Rome to the Ottoman emperor in exchange for a Jewish Palestine, he was arrested and tried for conspiracy and high treason.”⁷⁰
After realizing what occurred in the Netherlands and similar instances of the protection of Jews by true Protestant believers in Jesus, we can better understand Rabbi Emden’s beautiful words: “For if it had not been for the Christians, our remnant would surely have been destroyed, and Israel’s hope would have been extinguished amidst the Gentiles, who hate us because of our faith....But God, our Lord, has caused the Christian wise men to arise, who protect us in every generation.”⁷¹

Organizational Catholicism and its armies reduced large populations of innocent people to rubble in their attempts to maintain power throughout the world. In some cases, over three-quarters of the population was destroyed by some of the most horrifying torture imaginable. This kind of onslaught cannot be called anything less than a holocaust. Henry Halley, addressing these events, informs us: “In Bohemia, by 1600, in a population of 4,000,000, 80 per cent were Protestant. When the Hapsburgs and Jesuits had done their work, 800,000 were left, all Catholics.
In Austria and Hungary half the population Protestant, but under the Hapsburgs and Jesuits they were slaughtered.
In Poland, by the end of the 16th century, it seemed as if Romanism was about to be entirely swept away, but here, too, the Jesuits, by persecution, killed Reform.
In Italy, the Pope’s own country, the Reformation was getting a real hold; but the Inquisition got busy, and hardly a trace of Protestantism was left.
In Spain the Reformation never made much headway, because
the Inquisition was already there. Every effort for freedom or independent thinking was crushed with a ruthless hand. Torquemada (1420-98), a Dominican monk, arch-inquisitor, in 18 years burned 10,200 and condemned to perpetual imprisonment 97,000. Victims were usually burned alive in the public square; made the occasion of religious festivities. From 1481 to 1808 there were at least 100,000 martyrs and 1,500,000 banished. ‘In the 16th and 17th centuries the Inquisition extinguished the literary life of Spain, and put the nation almost outside the circle of European civilization’....In 50 years the Reformation had swept Europe, with most of Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Scandinavia, England, Scotland, Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, Poland in its grasp; and making headway in France. This was a terrific blow to the Roman Church, which, in turn, organized the Counter-Reformation; and by means of the Council of Trent (in
session 18 years, 1545-63)....Rome was organized for an aggressive onslaught on Protestantism; and under the brilliant and brutal leadership of the Jesuits regained much of the lost territory; South Germany, Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Belgium, and crushed the Reformation in France. Within a hundred years, by 1689, the Counter-Reformation had spent its force. The principal Rulers who fought the Pope’s Wars were: Charles V (1519-56) of Spain, against German Protestants; Philip II (1556-98), of Spain, against Holland, England; Ferdinand II (1619-37), of Austria, against Bohemians; Catherine de Medici, mother of three kings of France, Francis II (1559-60), Charles IX (1560-74), Henry III (1574-89), in the wars for the extermination of French Huguenots.
The Reformation movement was followed by a hundred years of religious war: 1. War on the German Protestants (1546-55); 2. War on the Protestants of the Netherlands (1566-1609); 3. Huguenot Wars in France (1572-98); 4. Philip’s attempt against England (1588); 5. Thirty Years War (1618-48). In these wars political and national rivalries were involved, as well as questions of property, for the Church in most countries owned one-third to one-fifth of all lands. But every one of these wars was STARTED by Roman Catholic Kings, urged on by Pope and Jesuit, for the purpose of crushing Protestantism. They were the Aggressors. The Protestants were on the Defensive. Dutch, German nor French Protestants became Political Parties till after years of persecution....The number of Martyrs under Papal Persecutions far outnumbered the Early Christian Martyrs under Pagan Rome: hundreds of thousands among the Albigenses, Waldenses, and Protestants of Germany, Netherlands, Bohemia and other countries. It is common to excuse the Popes in this matter by saying that it was the ‘spirit of the age.’ Whose age was it? and who made it so? The Popes. It was their world. For 1000 years they had been training the world to be in subjection to them. If the Popes had not taken the Bible from the people, the people would have known better, and it would NOT have been....”⁷²
Halley further documents that the Roman Catholics martyred “untold millions”⁷³ of innocent people because they chose to be Protestant and follow Jesus according to the New Testament.

Persecution of the Albigenses.

The Catholic “Church” has apparently never been happy about the return of Israel to her land, as are true Christians who believe in the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.⁷⁴ Instead, they have reacted with anger, illustrating their ignorance of the Scriptures and the promises of Jesus to His true followers. For example, Pope Pius X wrote to Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism: “We [the Roman Catholic establishment] are unable to favor this movement [Zionism]. We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem—but we could never sanction it. As the head of the Church I cannot answer you otherwise....if you come to Palestine and settle your people there, we will be ready....(Pope Pius X to Theodor Herzl on January 26, 1904)”⁷⁵
The historical record shows that the Pope was not able to prevent God’s prophetic plan of a Jewish return to Israel, as was so hoped for and so anticipated by true born-again Bible believing Christians. The Reverend Hechler, a true Bible believer, greatly encouraged Theodor Herzl, who wrote the following in his Diary: “The Reverend William Hechler, Chaplain of the English Embassy here, came to see me. A sympathetic, gentle fellow, with the long grey beard of a prophet. He is enthusiastic about my solution of the Jewish Question. He also considers my movement a ‘prophetic turning point’—which he had foretold two years before....From a prophecy....”⁷⁶
Quite a contrast to the Pope’s statement, which characterizes the majority of Catholic and liberal “Christian” opinion, which says, “Israel is not prophetic and modern Zionism is not biblical.”

In October of 1987, Nightline aired a segment in which one of
the announcers pointed out: “In 1948, still another affront, the Vatican was critical of the establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine. At that time Observatori Romano (the official Vatican newspaper) wrote, ‘Zionism is not the embodiment of Israel as it is described in the
Bible,’ implying that Israel did not have justification. Today, 37 years later, the Vatican and Israel still do not have full diplomatic relations.”⁷⁷ In this same broadcast, a clip from Good Morning America was aired, showing the Catholic theologian, Daniel Maguire, Ph.D., admitting: “We [Catholics], in fact, in the late eleventh century, conducted the first holocaust in Northern France, in Germany and so forth. We were the people that first said Jews had to live in ghettos and wear special things. Anything to do with Jews, we should recognize that we come into this, heavy with guilt. And Christians [Catholics]^[78] are not able to just sit back and say, ‘Gee, it’s terrible what happened in the Holocaust.’ A great deal of what happened, was us.”⁷⁹
We should remark that the majority of those killed in the Middle Ages were innocent Protestants! Their crimes were believing the New Testament, refusing to follow Roman Catholic doctrine and saving Jews from the armies of the Spanish king and the Pope. We think it is very decent that a Catholic theologian admitted to this crime of Catholicism, with apparent sorrow, on national television. Though it does not bring back those who were killed, it does break the long tradition of stonewalling silence.

On December 30, 1993, the Roman Catholic Vatican signed an agreement with Israel intended to establish diplomatic relations. However, we believe that the Vatican’s recognition of Israel was not sincere, but rather a device to secure Rome’s interests, including a say in the Palestinian question and the fate of Jerusalem. As a result of this, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren,⁸⁰ who constantly praised Evangelical Christians for their support of Israel, characterized a visit to the Vatican by the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Meir Lau as a “blasphemy beyond expression.”⁸¹
We believe that the well-known Christian author, Hal Lindsey, is correct when he says: “...it may be because of the pending talks about the future status of Jerusalem that the Vatican chose this moment in history to bridge new relations with Israel. According to the newly signed Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization agreement, negotiations on Jerusalem are scheduled to begin within the next two years. The Vatican, you see, has a long-term vested interest in the fate of Jerusalem. Rome has always desired a role in its future....The Bible prophesies a time—in the very near future—when the seat of a one-world religion and government will be Jerusalem. This could only occur, of course, with at least compliance by the world’s most important religious leader—the Roman Catholic pope. This does not mean, however, that this pope—or some future one—is or will be the antichrist. It merely suggests that after the Rapture, when all true believers are taken up to be with the Lord, the false church—Catholic or Protestant—that remains on earth will very much be a part of this one-world system.
Also, the Vatican has historically promoted the notion of world government. Pope John Paul II has, according to some insiders, recognized the dangers inherent in such an idea. He has even expressed fears, say some, about the future role of his church in such a globalist system.
Interestingly, when Rabbi Lau visited the pope in September, he also attended a large interfaith meeting in Milan. The headline speaker was Mikhail Gorbachev who addressed the ecumenical gathering on the topic: ‘Religion, Peace and Justice in the New World Disorder.’
‘The union of politics, science, religion and ethics holds the key to the solution for the future problems of modern man,’ he said. ‘Only a reasonable, responsible, ethical man can open the way to a peaceful future for humanity’....Israel and Jerusalem do indeed seem to be emerging as centers of political and religious activity on the world stage—just as the Bible predicted for the last days. Diplomatic ties between the Vatican and Jerusalem is just the latest profound development.
‘This will strengthen Israel’s international standing without a doubt,’ explained Avi Pazner, Israel’s ambassador to Italy. ‘It is important that we have ties with representatives of such a great religion.’ ”⁸²
Time will tell if the treaty is sincere. We doubt it! We believe this to be a political ploy rather than a spiritual reconciliation,⁸³ with Israel having the most to lose. The Vatican has no business having a say over the territory of the Jewish state, which God has given to modern Israelis, does it?

The editor of Parade, Tad Szulc, was recently granted an interview with the Pope. Portions of this interview were printed in the article, “An Interview with Pope John Paul II,” in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. A quote from the Pope that even startled us read: “ ‘It must be understood that Jews, who for 2000 years were dispersed among the nations of the world, had decided to return to the land of their ancestors. This is their right.’ ‘And this right...is recognized even by those who look upon the nation of Israel with an unsympathetic
eye.’ ”⁸⁴
This sounds very different than any previous thoughts to come out of Rome thus far. However, this Pope has recently met with evangelicals and has told young people “they must have a personal experience with Jesus.” That is New Testament talk at the expense of Catholic dogma.
Jack Van Impe even mentioned on his video, Startling Revelations, that Catholics threw dung at the Pope-mobile recently. This Pope almost seems as if he may be a true believer. However, he is old and we can see from Scripture that in the very end days, no doubt past his time unfortunately, Israel will not be treated kindly by Roman Catholicism. Thus, we can only question how the Vatican will treat the Jews after he is gone, as the Tribulation period draws ever closer.
A later portion of the article feeds our fears as it reflects the attitude still rampant within this organization, when it says: “There are Vatican conservatives who think that John Paul II has gone much too far in being a ‘protector of Jews,’ as the charge is whispered among some in Rome and elsewhere, and who would prefer to see their Church remain immutable in its attitudes as in bygone centuries.”⁸⁵

Even in Mexico, which has laws protecting freedom of religion, persecution sometimes occurs. And why? Because many are
becoming believers, shedding their ecumenical skin like a snake sheds its skin. Apparently, Catholic leaders and Pope John Paul II⁸⁶ were not very happy about this. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported in May of 1990: “Pope John Paul II left a warning for the country’s overwhelming Catholic population toward the end of his whirlwind eight-day tour of Mexico: Beware of proselytizing inroads by evangelical Protestants.
The proselytizing—particularly by independent evangelicals and Pentecostals who emphasize door-to-door evangelism...is an increasingly vexing problem for Mexico’s Catholic leaders.
On Friday, the pope pleaded with converts to return to the Roman Catholic faith....Rosa Maria Davila, a volunteer crowd-control monitor, joined Catholic leaders in criticizing the Protestant attempts to woo Catholics.
‘We’ve been invaded by a lot of sects from other parts of the world.’ she said. ‘They come here to break all the unity of our religion in Mexico. One thing that unites us is our Catholic faith.’
‘They are making a lot of propaganda,’ she said. ‘All I want is for them to leave us alone and not try to convert us’....Patricia Montelongo, a Mexico City journalist, said the evangelicals lure Catholics with gifts and special treatment.
‘They take them to dinner, give them clothes and other things, and then try to win them away from the Catholic faith,’ she said.
During a homily to 200,000 at Villahermosa in southern Mexico, where evangelicals have made the deepest inroads, John Paul directed his remarks to those who have left the Catholic Church.
‘I would like to meet with each one of you to say: Come back to the breast of your church, your mother....a more solid training in the truths of our Catholic faith so as to form a front against the solicitations of the sects and groups that try to pull you away from the true fold of the Good Pastor [Christ].’
He said no Catholics in Mexico can consider themselves exempt from an obligation to persuade those who have left the Catholic Church to return.
The population of Mexican Protestants grew from 875,000 in 1970 to 2.4 million in 1980, according to census figures.
Mexican bishops have expressed concern about growing numbers of Protestants....Catholic bishops from northwestern Mexico and California issued a pastoral letter earlier this year alerting Catholics to proselytizing efforts by non-Catholic church groups, some of them disparagingly referred to as ‘sects.’
But the so-called sects also have reason to worry.
Although Mexico’s constitution guarantees religious freedom, evangelicals have faced harsh treatment and even exile, especially in the southern state of Chiapas, where Protestants have recorded the most growth.
In the community of Mitontic in Chiapas state, officials evicted more then 600 evangelical Presbyterians....Pasqual Hernandez of San Juan Chamula told a reporter that he and his family had been roused from their sleep at midnight by police and locked in a school with four other Protestant families.
Later, Hernandez said, he and 60 other men, women and children, were jailed. Police released them after Domingo Perez, a Protestant pastor who previously had been expelled, contacted a civil-rights attorney, Hernandez said....Specialists at the Center for Religious Studies in Mexico, a non-denominational research center, told The New York Times that they believe the 1990 census will list about 6 million Protestants in Mexico and said that by the turn of the century Roman Catholics will be a minority in some Mexican states.
The Protestant growth has manifested itself especially among the Indian population near the Guatemalan border in southern Mexico. Protestants have translated the Bible into Indian tongues for the first time and found a receptive audience....Mexican church leaders, having seen the results of Protestant proselytizing in other Latin American countries, have mounted major missionary efforts recently that focus on the urban poor, peasants and Indian groups.
At least 25 million of Brazil’s 150 million people have abandoned the Catholic Church, and in Peru evangelical Protestants represent a major force.”⁸⁷