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Being that Rome, who ruled the known world, was under the influence of a form of Baal
worship, Christians who refused to worship the Emperor were persecuted, beginning with Nero,
in the middle of the first century. They were arrested and put to death in various ways, such as
crucifixion, being tied inside animal skins and attacked by wild dogs, fed to lions, and tied to
stakes to be burned as human torches to light Nero’s gardens at night. These persecutions, which
lasted until early in the fourth century, caused the Christians to literally go underground, to
worship secretly. They took refuge in the subterranean catacombs of Rome, which extended for
miles underneath the city. There are said to be over two million Christian graves in these
caverns. This persecution of the Christians was Satan’s attempt to get rid of the Biblical
teaching. Various religions, cults, and sects, were established to alter the Holy Scriptures in order
to change them, and confuse the world.
Although the Christians were persecuted, their faith in God stood fast. John, the brother of
James, the last of the disciples, was exiled to a penal colony on the island of Patmos in 97 A.D.
He was instrumental in preserving our Holy Bible, by informing Christians which of the
manuscripts were genuine. These manuscripts were then hidden by Christians in the cellars of
the great monasteries.
The Roman Catholic Church
In 305, the two Roman emperors, Diocletian and Maximian, stepped down, and were
succeeded by their deputies, Galerius and Constantius. Constantius was then replaced by
Maximinus Daia in the east, and Severus in the west, and he sent for his son Constantine to help
him reclaim the throne. After Constantius died, Constantine was proclaimed emperor by his
father’s army, and he led them in a march against Rome.
On the evening of October 27, 312, he came face to face with the legions of Maxentius at the
Milvian Bridge on the Tiber River. As he prepared to pit his small army against the military
might of Rome, so the legend goes, he vowed that if God would help him conquer Rome, he
would institute Christian rule. Eusebius wrote in The Life of Constantine, that above the setting
sun, Constantine and his troops saw a cross in the sky, and above it were the words: “Hoc signo
victor eris,” which means: “In this sign you shall be victorious.” That night, Christ appeared to
him with the cross, and told him to use it as a guardian. The next morning, he had this ‘sign of
God’ placed on his helmet, and the shields of his men.
Eusebius was given this account by the emperor himself, years afterward, but he didn’t write
about it till after Constantine’s death. Most historians never acknowledged this glorified account,
and not one man in his army of 40,000 ever mentioned it. Lactantius, a Christian, a few years
later, wrote that Constantine had a vision of Apollo at the temple in Gaul, who instructed him to
place the “celestial sign of God” on their shields prior to going into battle.
Constantine felt that Christ was a manifestation of the Sun God, Sol, or Apollo, even though
Christians didn’t know it. The emblem he used, was not the cross he allegedly seen, but the
symbol, known as the labarum, which was the first two Greek letters of the word ‘Christos,’ Chi
and Rho which had been discovered as part of an inscription found on a Pompeii tomb 250 years
earlier.
Regardless of what did happen, he won the battle, and took over the government of Rome.
The next year, in 313, he issued the Edict of Milan (also known as the Edict of Toleration),
which bestowed religious freedom, in order to show tolerance towards Christianity, and all other