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the verse in 1 John 5:7, which says: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father,
the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” These altered manuscripts were
prepared into Bibles for the newly formed Roman Catholic Church, and it was out of Eusebius’
translation, that the Latin Vulgate Bible emerged (a revision of the old Latin version translated
from the Greek Septuagint), written by Jerome (382-404), which became the official Bible for all
Roman Catholics. All other versions were banned, discarded, and destroyed.
Emperor Theodosius (378-398) made Christianity the official State religion, and church
membership was mandatory. This forced conversion brought many heathens, idol worshipers,
and pagans into the Church. Soon these pagans succeeded in getting statues of Semiramis and
Nimrod into the Church, as the Babylonian system of ‘mother and child’ worship eventually
evolved into the Madonna and child symbol (prominent at Christmas), and referred to them as
the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. The halos around their heads were symbolic of the sun.
Confessionals were established, just as they were in Babylon, and soon the Church began to
grow in power.
Several Christian sects and semi-Christian orders criticized the Catholic Church, and taught
from the original manuscripts, which they guarded with their lives, in order to insure the survival
of God’s word.
The Waldenses were founded in 1170 by a rich merchant from Lyons, in southern France,
called Peter Waldo. He separated from the Catholic Church, and sold all of his possessions. He
taught from the non-Latin version of the Bible, and said that the Catholic Church wasn’t the
Church of Christ, and referred to them as the World Church mention in the Book of Revelation.
The Christian movement spread to Spain, northern France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Hungary, and
Switzerland. The Anabaptists and Lollards were two groups which sprang from the Waldenses.
The Anabaptists was the name for various groups from the radical branch of the Protestant
Reformation in the 16th century. They were active in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, and
were nicknamed the ‘rebaptizers’ because they rejected the idea of infant baptism, which was
practiced by the Roman Catholic Church, as a means of saving souls, and demanded rebaptism.
Severely persecuted, they eventually rallied behind Menno Simons (1496-1561) who started the
group which eventually became known as the Mennonites.
John Wycliffe, a professor of Divinity at Oxford University, linked the Pope with the
Antichrist. He translated the Bible from Latin to English, and produced the first English Bible in
1382, paving the way for the Reformation. He organized a group called the Order of Poor
Preachers, and began distributing his new Bible. They were called ‘Lollards’ (or ‘idle babblers’).
Eventually Wycliffe’s writings were banned, and the Pope ordered him to Rome to undergo trial.
He died of a stroke in 1384 before he was able to go. By 1425, the Catholic Church was so upset
with the increase in the number of Lollards, that they ordered Wycliffe’s bones to be exhumed,
and they were burned together with the 200 books he had written.
In May, 1163, at a Council in Toulouse, France, which was attended by 17 Cardinals, 124
Bishops, and hundreds of Priests from the Roman Catholic Church, the Inquisition (from the
Latin verb ‘inquire,’ or ‘to inquire into’) was forged. As one speaker said: “An accursed heresy
has recently arisen in the neighborhood of Toulouse, and it is the duty of the bishops to put it
down with all the rigor of the ecclesiastical law.” Anyone who didn’t profess Catholicism was
sought out, and again, Satan attempted to destroy Christianity.
In 1198, Pope Innocent III sent two Inquisitors to France with the following order: “The
foxes called Waldenses, Cathari, and Patari, who, though they have different faces, yet all hang
together by their tails, are sent by Satan to devastate the vineyard of the Lord,” and they were “to