There is a comfort in the past. Unlike The Future which is unpredicatable and had to prognosticate, the Past has already happened, and so we as humans can look back and become enamored with it. A trend right now is that men are getting excited about the Roman Empire, they want it to return. This is nothing new, many times mankind has seen the Roma as some sort of ideal empire and "dream that was Rome," (Gladiator, 2000) that if achieved will bring about some sort of Eden or Paradiso on Earth. The problem is that this is romanticism (I know pun intended), The Roman Empire was not all aqueducts, roads, beautiful cities, philosophers, and order, it crucified people, tortured people, enslaved people, salted fields of enemies so that the crops would not grow, and had such debauchery that to mention it would not only make you blush, it would make ill to read about the fetishes emperors had. The point is that history tends to either get romanticized, and seen a paragon of what should be once more or it is demonized with terms like "the dark ages." The truth is always somewhere in the middle.
The trend of wanting Rome back is alarming because the last time there was zeal for Rome it became The Third Reich in Germany. Adolf Hitler adopted The Eagle of Rome, and in even wanted the lance that pierced Jesus' side that the Centurian Longinus used to see if our Lord was dead (John 19:34). That is the dark side of going back to the past and hoping to create some sort of Perfect Society. The time before that was the Renaissance and The Reformation, in which Europe went back to the sources or Ad Fontes, wanting to revive Roman art, literature, and even troop configurations, "The Renaissance gave Western Christendom a slogan: ad fontes, 'to the sources," an urge to return to the ancient, and therefore pure, founts of truth. By 1500, this fashion of antiquity was sweeping every field of knowledge. Renaissance linguists tried to recover the glories of Cicero (Roman Philosopher). Renaissance generals tried, with dubious success, to remodel their armies as Roman legions. The problem with the ancient world was that it happened a long time ago, and reconstructing it involved guesswork. Europeans never doubted that it had been a world of pristine perfection. They measured their own age against the imagined ideal. Inevitably, it fell short." (The Protestants: The Faith That Made The Modern World, Alec Ryrie, Chapter One, pg 18 of 513, First Edition, the new edition is a whole new book). As Author Ryrie points out with eloquence and clarity, it is an imagined ideal and guesswork of trying to recreate Rome in any century since its Fall, and the inevitable is that it will for short, because as Ridley Scott's Maximus says, "There was a dream that was Rome," indeed its a dream, and intangible one that cannot be realized, and for good reason, its the wrong one.
We are not to look to Rome as the answer to our instability in this world, or to somehow achieve the glories of old once more. The zeal to restore Rome is antichrist. For it is Christ The Redeemer, not the Roma that will restore us. For the Scriptures tell us where to fix our eyes, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." (Hebrews 12:2). Rome the Apostle Paul tells us was not paragon of virtue and veritas (truth), rather he chides them in his letter for their presumption on the blood of Christ to continue their orgies, and wickedness, "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace." (Romans 6:1-14). It was Rome that crucified our Lord Jesus Christ, and while that was the plan, Jesus had to die for our sins and reconcile us with His blood, the Romans did not kill him for that purpose, they killed him because Rome could not tolerate a king, a messiah, hence his crime post over his cross read, "Jesus of Nazerath, King of the Jews," (John 19:19-22) in Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. In fact, the charges the Pharisees brought up with Pilate were to that effect, "Then Pilate tried to release him, but the Jewish leaders shouted, “If you release this man, you are no ‘friend of Caesar.’ Anyone who declares himself a king is a rebel against Caesar." (John 19:12). So Rome was not noble in crucifying The Christ, they were covering themselves politically, for according to Former Bishop of London J.W.C Wand, "Pilate was pro the Senate, and so when Pharisees threatened him with they would contact Cesar, he was compelled to kill Jesus to save his own skin." (A History of the Early Church to A.D. 500). That is Rome in essence, people who spend their lives not seeking virtue or veritas as Pilate spoke to Jesus about in private, but rather consolidating your power and trying to prevent the mob from skinning you, even those who are Romans who claim to be your friends.
Rome has survived in two forms, it has in Law, Roman Law which was expounded upon, simplfiied, and promoted by Emperor Justinian of The Eastern Roma (Turkey). Roman Law is how most Western Countries conduct judicial matters, with reforms certainly, but the heart beat of Old Roman Lex is there. The other place Rome has survived is in the Great and Wicked Harlot Church known as the Roman Catholic Church. It is in the Papacy, Popes, and the Primate of St. Peter (its not really) that Rome was presrved after its fall in St. Augustine of Hippo's time. The Church, or Cult, for it is a Giant Cult which the Cult of Saints and Cult of the Virgo Mary, lorded over people's souls with the austerity and cruelty in the spirit as Rome did in the flesh, and even in flesh, for they burned people at the stake, called for crusades to killed Cathars, Moors, Prussian Pagans, Turks, Almorhads, Almorvids, Ayyubids, Mamulukes, and etc. They used their Inquistions of Spain and Italty to round up people on the basis of neighbors accusations, a methods the Nazi Gestapo would adopt. To this day the Roman Catholic Church proves itself a successor of Pilate and Old Rome, killing Christ, for at Mass they believe they kill Jesus over and over in contravention to Scripture that says, "For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him." (Hebrews 9:9:24-28), and they in spirit of Pharisees bar people from heaven, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut
the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do
not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to," (Matthew 23:13) and lead the way to hell, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You
travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have
succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are" (Matthew 23:15). Indeed that describes the Jesuits and other Roman pseudo-evangelists who made people children of hell with their false gospel! (Galatians 1:8-9).
Romanticizing Rome is perilous. It is a delusion of grandeur that is very dangerous. The Past can inspire, I am not saying all of Rome was bad, however, looking at it as City on a Hill that will give us light is wrong, it is a City on Seven Hills, known as the Harlot, "I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement. But the angel said to me, “Why did you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns. The beast that you saw was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition." (Revelation 17:6-9) We are not the partake of the harlot, we are to be as the Virgins with our lamps lit (Matthew 25:1-13). Our eyes are not to be fixed on Rome, but on Jesus Christ our Lord (Hebrews 12:2). What people are trying to find in the Roman fantasy is another christ, indeed it is a false christ (Matthew 24:24) in the form a dream. It is much like Karl Marx's Communism, seeing the State as Savior, that if we achieve the model it will make all great again. It will not, the answers do not lie in empires of old or theories of mad men, it is in The Messiah Jesus and His Kingdom is not of this world, "Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place." (John 18:36). He told us not to focus on this world's treasures, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:19-21). That we are to focus on the heavenly, on Him. The reason people are grasping at the straw of Rome is that so many do not know Jesus (John 17:3, Matthew 27:21-23), and the vacuum of Christi n their hearts is longing for a messiah, and so they pick from the past, hoping that if Rome or something else were to rise again, we will have utopia like the foolish Thomas More wrote about (he is precursor of Marxism and Communist ideals).
The Answer is not a "Dream that was Rome," but the Reality that is Jesus, "These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ." (Colossians 2:17, NIV). We are on our way to celebrate Easter, The Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Put aside the fiction of Rome, and put on Christ, "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." (Romans 13:14, ironic its in Romans). Yes, put on Christ and fix your eyes on Him! Leave Rome in the past. The Present and Future is the Kingdom of God. Amen.
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