Constantine The Great antichrist

 

  

Antichrist: Someone or something that replaces Christ. (Lost Definition).

 

Jesus Christ said, "For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect." (Matthew 24:24). There certainly have been antichrists throughout the ages: Charles Darwin, Adolf Hitler, Voltaire, to name a few. But what about in the church? Writers like Tim Lehaye whose famous "Left Behind Series" not only was successful financially, but also succeded in expousing a very obscure Tribulational view call "Partial Rapturism." In Leyhaye's books the Man of Sin is European and carries an aristrocratic air. Another author who was on the 700 Club proclaimed that the Man of Sin will be a Muslim and that end times view of Shittes even has a false Christ who proclaims Muhammend as the true prophet; could that be the false prophet and Beast in Revelation? Still others have cried that the Man of Sin will be homosexual fulfilling the description, "he will not desire women." (Daniel 11:37).

 

While all the arguments are compelling, I believe that there will always be many antichrists, but The Antichrist is appointed for a specific time. My mentor said that she was taught, "Satan has an antichrist in every age and century ready for The Battle of Armegeddon, because Satan lives in time and cannot be everywhere like God, he has to be prepared at all times for the final battle. Satan is guessing, he doesn't know when it is suppose to happen, so he has an antichrist ready in ever age." I think this is plausible and supports the Apostle John's words, "Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour." (1 John 2:18). John makes distinction between that the antichrist is coming, but there have already been many antichrists.

 

One of those antichrists came in 333 A.D. The man was Constantine Augutus, often called "The Great." From the prespective of Orthodox Christians and Roman Christians he is considered a hero who saved the church from oblivion. His statue and veneration continue today and the kingdom he set up, The Byzantine Empire, is still heralded as a cradle of civilication with its former capital being Constantinople (modern day Istanbul). Constantine is seen as Christ's champion, he brought an end to the four hundred year persecution of Christians. However, what Constatnine did to the church was the most antichrist of all! Jesus Christ had come to die for mankind's sin and reestablish a close relationship between God and His Creation. On the cross, "At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split." (Matthew 27:51). The Temple system was in effect broken and now man could look beyond the curtain without a priest and see Christ Jesus face to face. Before if man looked upon God he would perish, but now because of the Blood of Jesus Christ; Man can stand and go before the Father. (Hebrews 4:16).

 

Our Lord and Savior had accomplished Four objectives  (there maybe more) with His death on the cross. Firstly,  "He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2:2). In this act Jesus Christ cleansed us from all unrighteousness and wickedness which had separated us from God's presence and closeness. This sacrifice was conclusive, Jesus only had to die once for all sin and for all time: "Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but he was raised to life in the Spirit." (1 Peter 3:18). The Second objective the Alpha and Omega achieved was breaking down the separation between man and God relationally. The Temple had been the center of relating to God, but it was never suppose to be. The Almighty said to David, "I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought Israel up out of Egypt to this day. I have moved from one tent site to another, from one dwelling place to another." (1 Chronicles 17:5). The Prophet Daniel proved this in the Captivity of Babylon, he heard from the Lord, had visions, and even saw the Coming of Christ Jesus in a pagan land far from a temple; Daniel actually prayed in his home (more on that later).

 

The Third objective Jesus attained when he died for us was restoring the Kavod to man. The Kavod was the full authority over the Earth, The Lord tells Adam, "God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:28). When Adam and Eve rebelled and partook the Forbidden Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they lost the Kavod to Satan. Jesus got it back with his blood and he actually increased are authority: "I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you," (Luke 10:19) and "Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 18:18). Not only was the Kavod of the Earth ours again through Christ our Lord, but were given authority over the powers in heaven and the princes of the air! It is written, "You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor." (Pslam 8:5). But through Jesus Christ and His Blood, we have become greater than the angels! For we are not alone anymore, God dwells in us (Romans 8:11), when we command the good legion of angels they must obey because God is in us and thus they are obeying God, the same goes for the fallen angels that must submit to the authority of God in us! The Fourth objective Jesus Christ achieved was restoring our immortality. In the beginning we were to live forever in Eden, "but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." (Genesis 2:17). This death was twofold; physical, in that our bodies we perish and spiritual in that man is separated from God by sin; in fact Hell's true definition is "separation from God." Through Jesus Christ, this was reversed, we are promised Eternal life: "For God so loved the World, that he gave his only begotten Son, and who ever believes in Him, shall not perish but have eternal life," (John 3:16) and "Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die." (John 11:25-26). But then we also get new bodies too! We don't just get to go to heaven, we get new bodies! Here is the promise: "For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands.  We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing.  For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies.While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life.  God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit." (2 Corinthians 5:1-5).

Now to return to Constantine. After all that Jesus Christ gained and set us free from and restored us to, Constantine once he became Holy Emperor of the Church decided to reverse it step by step. Before his conversion, Constantine was a pagan Roman, and when he adopted the Christian Faith for his whole kingdom he required that the paganisms remain; the Sun god worship can still be found in Eastern Orthodox Churches today, I have even experienced a service that did it and it gave me massive headache. Constantine in addition to keeping pagan practices, required the church be placed in a building and a return to the old temple system the Alpha and Omega had torn down on the cross:

"But I will say this: after completed the great building I have described, he finished it with thrones high up, to accord with dignity of the prelates (bishops, priests), and also with benches arranged conveniently throughout. In addition to all this, he placed in the middle the Holy of Holies -the altar- excluding, the general public from this part too by surrounding it with wooden trellis..," (The History of the Church, Eusebius, Penguin Classics, pg 315)

Here we can see Constantine re-erecting that curtain that came crashing down when Christ died upon the cross. Jesus even said, "Jesus came out from the temple and was going away when His disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to Him. And He said to them, "Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down.." (Matthew 24:1-2). And yet Constantine desired to erect those fallen stones and create the formalized worship and rituals that mirror the Jewish practices of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Through Constantine the Temple System of sacrifice, now called the Sacraments, was reborn, only in place of the blood of lambs was the Blood of the Lamb in the Eucharist. This restoration of the temple system is antichrist, because it has men being separated and at distance to The Father, Jesus Christ, and The Holy Spirit. The Apostles refute and speak against Constantine's return to the old temple system in the following verses: "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?" (1 Corinthians 3:16), "For we are co-workers in God's service; you are God's field, God's building," (1 Corinthians 3:9), "If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person; for God's temple is sacred, and you together are that temple," (1 Corinthians 3:17), "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own," (1 Corinthians 6:19), "What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people," (2 Corinthians 6:16, this refutes Constantine's pagan practices), and "But Christ is faithful as the Son over God's house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory," (Hebrews 3:6), and "This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit." (1 John 4:13).

In effect Constantine was an antichrist because he made the church return to the old ways of the Old Testament with New Testament images and names; and in effect turned people from closeness to Christ and instead to antichrist practices. He deceived Christians into believing they must go to a temple or church to seek and be with God who is at distance; when from the lengthy bit of Scriptures it is clear that we, the Body of Christ, are God's Temple! We have no need for a building, services, and rituals; we have the Living God; the Christ inside us! And yet Constantine's work continues to hold control over people today and leads them way from a personal relationship with the Almighty.

To make it even more clear, Constantine tried to reversed Christ's gains by 1) replacing Christ's All sufficient sacrifice (1 Peter 3:18) with Sacramental practices to be saved (Baptism being one). 2) He created a church structure that says God is in Holy of Holies (the Altar) and thus separated from the saints and believers by a curtain. 3) He created a caste system of clergy and laity; and only the clergy can approach God and understand his ways. 4) He had Scripture replaced with Holy Tradition and rituals; and set the precedent for the Laity being excluded from reading the Bible, because if they could read the bible they would know the Truth: "For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus," (1 Timothy 2:5) and that Jesus came to reconcile us to God: "All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation," (2 Corinthians 5:18); Jesus did not come to start a religion and rituals that resembled the Jewish Temple and Priesthood; He came to tear down the walls between God and Man: Sin and (Man made/Satanic) Systems. 5) Constantine made the church a building, traditions, and involvement therein (a club), when the Church was simply "The Body of Christ,": all believers who had faith in Christ Jesus; not just those who attended church.

Martin Luther and the Reformers broke through many of these corrupted barriers erected by Constantine; the most important being unleashing the Scriptures to the Laity so they could read the Truth for themselves and see the lies and antichrist traditions of Constantine's system. The problem is the entire cathedral of Constantine has not collapsed. The Reformation gained ground, but there is one last piece: the Church structure. There are still priests, pastors, and a separation between laity and clergy; plus the need for the building. I believe the Lord Jesus Christ is going to destroy these; He's already making motions in the rest of the world by tearing down Constantine style churches through catastrophes and local authorities. The Remnant will one day be free of Constantine's last corruption. The House Churches springing up all over the world are beginning and the right step towards the Apostolic Church of the Bible. The Church during the time of the Apostles was not like the one today; Constantine effectively placed the church in a Winter that has lasted from 333. A.D. to 1700 A.D. But there are still chills here in 2015 A.D.; churches that still are under the antichrist structure Constantine set up. Its time church to break free, to finish The Reformation! To loose the shackles of the spirit of religion and Satan that were placed upon the Church in the time of Constantine. Look to the Holy Scriptures to see how we should live for Christ: through prayer together, gathering together (not sitting in pews and letting one man speak, but like a family that meets to eat, talks, and prays), caring for one another like Christ did us; loving one another (John 13:34), and through reading the Scriptures and using them to "to teach, rebuke, correct, and train in righteousness," (2 Timothy 3:16) and lean on the Holy Spirit and move in the Gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12.