Series on the Modern Lukewarm Evangelical Church – No. 8
In Part III we shall examine the third and fourth periods (Pergamum and Thyatira) of the seven periods of history in the Church Age and how the Bible doctrines, leadership gifts, and the gifts of the Spirit were substantially compromised, corrupted, or abandoned altogether. These periods encompass the rise of the Roman Catholic Church in the fourth century (300s) to the Reformation era beginning in 1517.
The Church enters the era of compromise
• Pergamum – Church of compromise (AD 312-590). It was labeled as the “throne of Satan” and the church where Satan dwelled. This church mixed with the world. They were faithful in spirit but filthy in flesh. They communed with persons of corrupt principles and practices which brought guilt and blemish upon the whole body. This period saw the beginnings of the Catholic Church (both Roman and Eastern Orthodox) in the late 4th century and 5th centuries.
Here we must return in our walk through church history back to the beginning of the fourth century (the 300s). Given that the first century was the most momentous century in church history, the fourth and sixteenth centuries would be runners-up. The fourth century may be characterized as: (1) the beginning of the Pergamum age in church history (church of compromise), (2) the world invades the church, and (3) the emergence of the Roman Catholic Church, all occurring in the context of the accelerating fall of the Roman Empire. All of these events began with the Roman Emperor Constantine’s 313 Edict of Milan that legalized Christianity throughout the Roman Empire.
Christianity’s legalization in 313 (fourth century) had ended much of the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Christianity became the professed religion of the Emperor and was now seen as the avenue to material, military, political, and social success. Thousands joined the church, but many were Christians in name only as the narrow gate was made wide which allowed a flood of corruptions to flow into the church.[1] The legalization of Christianity and the end of persecution followed by recognition as the official religion of the state laid the foundations for the rise of the Roman Catholic Church in the fourth century.
By 381, Christianity was officially deemed to be the state religion of the Roman Empire. Not only did the church suffer much corruption from within, it quickly learned that Constantine and his successors would extract a most severe price for their newfound liberty. Separation of the church from the Roman state soon disappeared as the state demanded a say in church affairs.
The corruption in the church was disturbing to many church leaders in the fourth century, but their remedies appear to have only worsened the decline. Augustine (354-430) is considered the greatest of the fathers and doctors of the Roman Catholic Church. Augustine’s teachings dominated the Middle Ages.[2] Augustine’s life straddled the formative years of the Roman Catholic Church. Many of his teachings became the foundation of much of the Catholic Church’s false dogma and traditions. Just two of the false teachings advocated by Augustine were his great promotion of monasticism (one of the outstanding aspects of life in the Middle Ages) and his advocacy of persecution of both the heathen and heretics. The Roman Catholic doctrine of persecution became an important practice a thousand years later when Protestants were persecuted during the time of the Reformation.[3]
As the Empire drew to a close, Rome was sacked in 410 and eventually all provinces of the western part of the Empire were conquered (Italy, North Africa, Spain, Gaul including the Netherlands, and Britain). The Empire officially fell with the conquest of Rome in 476, but the church survived because many barbarian tribes had become Christians and, as a consequence, respected the bishop of Rome.[4]
False doctrines introduced by the Roman Catholic Church
The Christian church that survived at the end of the fifth century bore little resemblance to the church that entered the fourth century. Over the course of 150 years, the bishop of Rome gradually became recognized as superior to all other bishops in the Western half of the Roman Empire. By 461 the papacy was fully established, and in this march to papal supremacy, many of the doctrines and the first century organization and operation of the church’s leadership and laity had been completely turned upside down. The episcopal form of church organization grew rapidly into a centralized power structure. The leaders of the episcopate took the plain meaning of the words of the Bible and allegorized them to mean what they wanted. To the corrupted Word were added traditions of men. By the end of the fifth century, the Roman Catholic Church became the fount of unscriptural doctrines, practices, and the traditions of men and their organizations.[5] The following list is not meant to be all-encompassing:
• Prayers for the dead
• A belief in purgatory (place in which souls are purified after death before they can enter heaven)
• The forty-day Lenten season
• The view that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice and that its administrators are the priests
• A sharp division of the members of the church into clergy (officers of the church) and laity (ordinary church members)
• The veneration (adoration) of martyrs and saints, and above all the veneration of Mary
• The burning of tapers or candles in honor of the saints, martyrs, and Mary
• Veneration of relics of martyrs and saints
• The ascription of magical powers to these relics
• Pictures, images, and altars in the churches
• Gorgeous vestments for the clergy
• More and more elaborate and splendid ritual (form of worship)
• Less and less preaching
• Pilgrimages to holy places
• Monasticism
• Worldliness
• Persecution of heathen and heretics[6]
To mortal eyes, the future of the church of the Living God at the end of the fifth century appeared to be headed for oblivion, just another Jewish sect that rose to prominence and then faded into history. The church had been compromised and weakened with false teaching and practices, the Roman Empire lay in ruins, and the barbarians ruled much of the former Empire. The outlook for the true church of Jesus was bleak.
The Church enters a thousand years of corruption
• Thyatira – The corrupt church (590-1517). Although commended for their charity, service, faith, and patience, evil grew and idolatry was practiced in the church at Thyatira. The church contained unrepentant and wicked seducers who drew God’s servants into fornication and the offering of sacrifices to idols. In the West, the Roman Catholic Church consolidated its power under the papacy beginning with Pope Gregory I which lasted for almost a thousand years.
With the installation of Pope Gregory the Great in 590, the papacy had reached the pinnacle of its secular and religious power and closed the door on the Pergamum period of church history (the church of compromise 312-590). The church then entered the opened door of the Thyatiran period (the corrupt church 590-1517).
Although the Roman Catholic Church claims that the first Pope was Peter, most scholars state that the first Pope was Gregory the Great because the power of the papacy (papal supremacy) did not fully develop until around the time of Gregory the Great. Born in 540, Gregory the Great was the first monk to become pope and ruled from 590 until his death in 604. It had been over a hundred years since the new barbarian kingdoms began to be built on the ruins of the Roman Empire in 476.[7]
Gregory the Great represented the most distinctive traits of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages and beyond: (1) He was the first pope to assume broad political powers, and (2) he assumed the role of a secular ruler by appointing the leaders of cities, raising armies, and making peace treaties. In exercising these tasks, he undertook many of the political and administrative duties and powers the failed Roman Empire had relinquished such as the work of education, care of the poor, and maintaining a semblance of justice and civil order. Had he and the church not done so, the valley of darkness in Europe would have been much deeper.[8]
Yet, to achieve the power necessary for civil order, the church made a bargain with the Devil. When the church began adopting the episcopal form of government to defend against doctrinal heresy, the church also began to undermine the organizational pattern prescribed for the church. This eventually led to great compromise within the church. Likewise, the assumption of the secular role of government in the sixth century to achieve civil order coupled with the heresies and false teachings of Roman Catholicism led to a thousand years of corruption within the church and continues within the Roman Catholic Church to the present day.
During the thousand-year Thyatiran period of church history, the New Testament doctrines of the Bible and the organization and operation of the church were for all practical purposes obliterated. This is summed up by the following quotation from Don Stewart which describes the Roman Catholic view that the Bible is not the final authority for the church. By “church” is meant the Roman Catholic Church for they believe that if one is not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, that person is lost and will go to Hell.
The result is this: the Bible is not the final standard of truth—rather it is the Roman Catholic Church and their infallible interpretation of it. They believe that the Scriptures are authoritative, but they are incomplete. This is important to understand. The Roman Church believes that God has more to say to humanity than that which is contained in the Bible. Oral tradition supplies what is lacking in written tradition, the Scriptures, and thus is an authority alongside of the Bible. Only the Roman Church can correctly interpret both Scripture and sacred tradition. And because sacred tradition is ongoing, Roman Catholic theology is constantly evolving. Thus, if we want to hear God’s voice today, we must listen to the Roman Church.[9]
Beginning at the fall of the Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church spread their brand of Christianity for a thousand years throughout the West to the extent that it became known as Christendom (which generally includes much of Western Europe, the British Isles, and Ireland). Countries became Christian in name only, usually through various political and religious alliances or at the point of the sword. But the apparent complete apostasy of the church poses a huge question. How did the true heart of the Christian church survive and later revive first century New Testament Christianity?
We must remember that even though the New Testament doctrines of the Bible and the leadership of the church established in the first century had been thoroughly corrupted, there remained a remnant of true believers who had the Holy Spirit within and therefore access to the gifts of the Spirit that gave guidance and fostered hope. The existence of this remnant became evident beginning with the stirrings of church reform in the twelfth century. But first we must mention final separation of the two great wings of the Christian faith.
The Great Schism – 1054
The Medieval church (Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) was a powerful monolithic structure throughout the Middle Ages. But after the first millennium the unity within the church ended with the Great Schism in 1054 when the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches of the church were irretrievably separated following six centuries of smoldering conflict. The foundations of the western Roman church soon began to be challenged by other influences outside of the church. The Crusades encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church did much to break down the feudal system that opened the door to new economic and intellectual advances in the West.[10] The Crusades began as a noble concept but was misguided by a perverted religious purpose, ineffective leadership, and faulty execution of mission.
Stirrings of church reform – twelfth through the fifthteenth centuries (1100s-1400s)
In addition to political and cultural changes faced by the powerful Roman Catholic Church from without, the life of the church was being stirred from within. Beginning in the twelfth century various remnants of the church began to appear and challenge Roman Catholic orthodoxy.
• Peter Waldo and the Waldenses
Peter Waldo believed that the Bible and particularly the New Testament should be the only basis for faith and living the Christian life. Around the year 1176 he sold his merchandise and gave his money to the poor. He and his followers became known as the Waldenses. They memorized large portions of the New Testament, dressed simply, fasted three days each week, used only the Lord’s Prayer, and did not believe in purgatory, masses, and prayers for the dead. Men as well as women were allowed to be lay preachers. The pope enlisted some of the nobles to help in eradicating the Waldenses and other groups, and as a consequence it was said that “blood flowed like water” for twenty years in southern France. But a remnant of the Waldenses survived and found refuge in the Alps of western Switzerland and three hundred years later accepted the teachings of Protestantism.[11]
• John Wycliffe and the Lollards
Englishman and Oxford professor John Wycliffe began to criticize the clergy in 1376 because of the corruption within the church and its quest for wealth and political power. He called for a return to the poverty and simplicity of the apostles and declared that the Bible and not the church should be the only determinant of faith. Since the people could not read the Bible written in Latin, he translated it into the English language. Wycliffe died in 1384. His followers were called the Lollards and continued to preach that the only standard for doctrine was the Bible. Throughout England many Lollards were martyred at the stake and only a small remnant survived in secret until the time of the Reformation.[12]
• John Huss and the Hussite movement
The teachings of Wycliffe did not die with the Lollards but spread to Europe and eventually to Bohemia. John Hus was only fifteen when Wycliffe died. Hus eventually became the head of the University of Prague and enthusiastically welcomed Wycliffe’s teaching. He began to preach boldly about the corruption of the clergy, and many of his ideas became the central teachings of the future Reformation. Hus claimed that only Christ was the head of the church and popes and cardinals were not required for its governance. He challenged the sale of indulgences which was a monstrous practice that contradicted the doctrines of the Bible. For his brashness, Hus was excommunicated, imprisoned, and subsequently burned at the stake on July 6, 1415. For the next twenty-two years the church battled the Hussite movement which resulted in a great slaughter.[13]
These are only three of the dissenting groups that challenged the corruption within the Roman Catholic Church during the twelfth through fifteenth centuries (1100s-1400s). During this period the church grew weaker as the corruption within increased along with increased repression of dissenters. The flashpoint came with the Roman Church’s sale of indulgences in which the penitent sinner was able to substitute the payment of a sum of money in lieu of other forms of penalty or satisfaction for his or her sins. In 1517, this abuse was the seemingly tiny spark that led to the great inferno within the church called the Reformation. It is here we end the corrupt thousand-year Thyatiran period of church history. After 1517, the Roman Catholic continued its corruptions to the present day, but the dissenting remnant would have to wait another two hundred years before they could establish “the pure and stainless church” during the Philadelphian period.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), p. 27.
[2] Ibid., p. 39.
[3] Ibid., pp. 45-46.
[4] Ibid., pp. 49-51.
[5] Ibid., p. 44.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid., pp. 57-58.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Don Stewart, “What is the Roman Catholic Claim as to Where Ultimate Authority Resides?” Blue Letter Bible,
https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/bible-ultimate-authority/question4-roman-catholic-claim-ultimate-authority.cfm (accessed August 23, 2021).
[10] Kuiper, The Church in History, pp. 140-141.
[11] Ibid., pp. 141-143.
[12] Ibid., pp. 143-144.
[13] Ibid., pp. 144-147.
