contents - Description: Description: Description: Description ...

though prophets, anointed by God, warned them, they did not heed the warning. As a
punishment, God allowed them to become enslaved by other nations.
When Attalus, King of Pergamos, died in 133 B.C., he bequeathed the Babylonian priesthood
to Rome. Thus, Julius Caesar became the Supreme Pontiff of the Babylonian Order. All Roman
emperors served in this capacity until 376 A.D., when Emperor Gratian refused it, and
Damascus, a Church Bishop, was appointed the Supreme Pontiff.
Jesus Christ, whose birth was prophesied by Isaiah (Isa. 7:14), was sent by God to be the
Saviour of the Jews. However, He wasn’t recognized as the awaited Messiah, and was despised
by religious leaders who plotted against Him. These Jewish leaders became His judges,
presenting phony witnesses, and breaking eighteen Jewish laws in order to have Him sentenced
to death. Satan, who three years before, had tempted Jesus in the wilderness, believed that
through His crucifixion, he had defeated Christ. But, as you know, He rose from the dead three
days later; and forty days later was transfigured into heaven. With the Great Commission, Jesus
had instructed His disciples to go to all the world to spread the gospel, and Satan tried his best to
defeat the Christian movement.
Two years after the establishment of the true Christian Church, Satan raised up a man known
as Simon Magus, a Babylonian priest, to do his bidding. According to Acts 8:9-11, Simon “used
sorcery, and bewitched the people ... giving out that himself was some great one.” Many people,
“from the least to the greatest” were impressed with him, thinking him to be “the great power of
God.” When the apostle Philip began to preach the gospel, and perform miracles in Samaria,
Satan saw the potential of being able to use Christianity for his own purpose, and Simon tried to
buy his way into an apostleship, without the repenting his sins, in order to gain this mysterious
new power. Simon adopted some of the Christian teachings interweaving it with his own pagan
religion, and called it Christianity.
The Dictionary of Christian Biography (Vol. 4, page 682) says: “...when Justin Martyr wrote
his ‘Apology’ (152 A.D.), the sect of the Simonians appears to have been formidable, for he
speaks four times of their founder, Simon ... and tells that he came to Rome in the days of
Claudius Caesar (45 A.D.), and made such an impression by his magical powers, that he was
honored as a god, a statue being erected to him on the Tiber, between the two bridges, bearing
the inscription ‘Simoni deo Sancto’ (‘the holy god Simon’).”
Besides his attempt to dilute Christian teaching, Satan zeroed in on its leaders.
Stephen, who was a deacon in the first Christian church in Jerusalem, was stoned to death in
29 A.D.; James, the son of Zebedee, was beheaded in Jerusalem in 45 A.D.; Philip was tied to a
pillar at Phrygia in 54 A.D. and stoned; James, the son of Alpheus, was dragged from the
Temple, stoned, and beaten to death with a club in 63 A.D.; in 64 A.D., Mark (author of one of
the Gospels) was seized by a mob of pagan priests and idol worshipers, who tied a rope around
his neck, and dragged him through the streets of Alexandria till he died; Paul (Saul of Tarsus)
was persecuted, then beheaded in Rome, in 69 A.D.; Simon Peter was crucified upside-down in
Rome in 69 A.D.; Andrew was tied to a cross, and left there three days before he died;
Bartholomew was severely beaten in Armenia in 70 A.D., then beheaded; at Calaminia in 70
A.D., Thomas was thrown into a furnace, then speared to death with javelins; at Nad-davar in 70
A.D., Matthew was nailed to the ground, then beheaded; Simon, the Canaanite, was crucified in
Syria in 70 A.D.; Judas Thaddeus was beaten to death with sticks in 70 A.D.; Matthias (who
replaced Judas Iscariot as a disciple/apostle after Judas committed suicide) was tied to a cross,
stoned, and then beheaded in 70 A.D.; Luke (another writer of the Gospels) was hung from an
olive tree in Greece in 93 A.D.; and Timothy was stoned to death by idol worshipers in 98 A.D.