Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican

Maps of the Roman Empire in Rome. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 In Bible terms the Pope and Putin are massively important players in prophecy. Daniel 7 tells us about the Pope and Daniel 8 about Putin. Daniel 7 tracks the little horn (a horn is a ruler) who comes out of the Roman Empire who speaks great things against God and changes the times and seasons. The ruler described is the religious power of Rome headed by the Pope who claimed he was the Holy Father – they even changed our calendar! The little horn of Daniel 8 is different. This is NOT Rome. This horn comes out of Greece – he was Antiochus Epiphanes. But a latter day king of the north exists – this time in Russia.

Tomorrow(on June 10) Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican, with conflicts in Syria and Ukraine likely to top the Holy See's agenda.
Putin last called on Francis on November 25, 2013. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Thursday the meeting would take place in the afternoon of June 10; Putin is expected to visit Russia's pavilion at the Expo world's fair in Milan, where June 10 has been slated as Russia's national day.


After nearly a half-century of hostility between the Vatican and the Kremlin during the Cold War, a major breakthrough came just after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 when the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, met the Polish-born pontiff, John Paul II.
After a 2009 visit by then-President Dmitry Medvedev, Russia and the Holy See upgraded their diplomatic relations to full-fledged ties, with ambassadors..

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A rebellious movement founded on a fake?

English: Icon of Jesus Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There is no doubt that all mainline denominations, but particularly those that embrace a so-called liberal orthodoxy, are in decline.

There are many people who want others to believe that Jesus Christ did not exist and that Christianity is build upon a fake.

It might be strange that those people who wants us to believe jesus from Nazareth (Jeshua from the tribe of David) did not exist are running high with other historical figrures where less writings and information can be found  than the one they scorn.

Many also consider early Christianity as a rebellious underground movement until Roman Emperor Constantine made it his religious practice in A.D. 312. We do agree that Constantine's conversion, based on what he viewed as a victorious sign from God prior to going into battle, and his demand to the preachers of Christ that they would agree with the empire its system of worshipping, made that the movement became more attractive because lots of attitudes could be continued and worship became no different than they knew already from the Roman and Greek worshipping, having now a three-une god to their liberty.

Having Christendom made in an official religion of Rome in A.D. 380 did more for the spread of Christianity than any proselytizing efforts conducted by the Apostle Paul. Though the religion that was subservient to the Roman Empire, beard little resemblance to the radical teachings of Jesus.

The first-century Gospels did not want to give a correct historical day to day overview, but presented those teachings of the man the writers considered to be the Messiah.
 The gospels indicate that Jesus was a historical figure.

Myths and even legends normally involved characters placed centuries in the distant past. People wrote novels, but not novels claiming that a fictitious character actually lived a generation or two before they wrote. Ancient readers would most likely approach the Gospels as biographies, as a majority of scholars today suggest. Biographies of recent figures were not only about real figures, but they typically preserved much information. One can demonstrate this preservation by simply comparing the works of biographers and historians about then-recent figures, say Tacitus and Suetonius writing about Otho.

 writes Professor Craig S. Keener in the Huffington Post.

Contrary to some circles on the Internet, very few scholars doubt that Jesus existed, preached and led a movement. Scholars' confidence has nothing to do with theology but much to do with historiographic common sense. What movement would make up a recent leader, executed by a Roman governor for treason, and then declare, "We're his followers"? If they wanted to commit suicide, there were simpler ways to do it.

One popular objection is that only Christians wrote anything about Jesus. This objection is neither entirely true nor does it reckon with the nature of ancient sources. It usually comes from people who have not worked much with ancient history. Only a small proportion of information from antiquity survives, yet it is often sufficient.

Those who want to find more about the existence of this cult figure may look further at the new series Why think that (1) … Jesus existed? 
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Jesus Existed 

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Simplicius Against the Monophysites

When Simplicius became bishop of Rome on this day, March 3, 468, it must have seemed to him that his troubles would come from the western half of the disintegrating Roman Empire. There Vandals, Visigoths, and Franks had replaced Roman power with their own. For thirteen years the western empire had been ruled by puppet emperors, controlled by these barbarians. Furthermore, Odovakar, a Herulian (one of the Teutonic tribes) seized power in Rome. Despite these omens, it was the East that gave Simpli... Read More >

Simplicius Against the Monophysites

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History of the acceptance of a three-in-one God

The faithful Jewish people and prophets of the Old Testament never accepted a three-in-one God. It is true that the unfaithful among the Israelites often borrowed pagan gods, pagan customs, and pagan concepts (including Baal and Astarte) and added them to their God-given religion. But there is no record (scriptural or secular) of a trinity concept even among them.

God His People had, like we should have only one God in heaven who was and is the only one Who should be worshipped. The Elohim Hashem is the Creator of everything Who gave His Name to be honoured and showed His works on earth as in heaven.

He has been the Creator of everything and be willing to receive all of His creation as His beloved ones. Every human person should be His child, respecting Him as the Only One God.

Adam and Eve very well knew Who their Creator was but doubted at a certain moment His position. They learned their lesson when it was to late. Their children where brought up with that knowledge and also their grandchildren got to know the reason why they only should believe in that One God.

In time human people grew away from the Creator of all things and later they even started to believe they could create things themselves.

The Hebrews got in their tribes people who were very close to the Creator and who showed them the way to God. God saw their honesty and their belief and promised many things which came in fulfilment except the few things still to happen.

Judaism is monotheistic and personal and from the tribe of king David, a very devote Jew was born, who became a master teacher and got several followers. Those followers, at the beginning mainly Jews believed the words of their rabbi Jeshua, who later became better known as Jesus from Nazareth, being the Christos or Christ Jesus.

English: Jesus Christ - detail from Deesis mosaic, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Also gentiles or non-Jews came to the faith in this young man, who died for the sins of many, and believed that the Father, Jehovah God had resurrected him. Many saw in this wonder and the actions he had done the proof that he was the Messiah. As son of God they respected him and saw him in the work God had done for the earth. This son of man, son of Adam, son of Abraham, son of David and son of Joseph and Miriam (Mary/Maria) attracted more people to come closer to God.

In the Roman Empire there were many gods honoured by the gentiles and it looked very attractive to keep certain attitudes going. But the apostles soon saw false teachings spreading around and warned that people had to be very careful. From the very beginning, of course, Christians not only believed in God in the sense in which the Jews did, but they also believed in Jesus Christ. But they did not believe in him as a 'god son', that idea became only introduced many centuries later.

The first followers of Christ became a Jewish sect called The Way which professed monotheism in the same terms as did the Jews. As the Hellinistic teachings influenced certain Jewish teachings the followers of Christ did not escape of those influences either. In the fourth century the false teachings brought more confusion and with the upheld gentile traditions or pagan rituals looked more attractive to many Christians like the movement became more known.

"Speculative thought began to analyze the divine nature until in the 4th century an elaborate theory of a threefoldness in God appears. In this Nicene or Athanasian form of thought God is said to consist of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all equally eternal, powerful and glorious." - Encyclopedia Americana, 1944, v. 6, p. 619, "Christianity".

During the fourth century Egypt was going to give to the church the Arian heresy, the Athanasian orthodoxy, and the monastic piety of St. Antony and St. Pachomius, which spread with irresistible force over Christendom.

The worst figure for Christianity was Constantine (C., Flavius Valerius Constantinus) who during the decline period of the Roman Realm was the Big Emperor (306–337 C. T.) and tried to merge Christianity with particular pagan customs and doctrines. He undertook the first steps to make this merger religion as the official state religion. Accordingly Greece became a part of Christendom. He moved the capital of the realm of Rome to Byzantium, which he named in honour of himself Constantinople.
It was Constantine who decreed (March 7, 321) dies Solis—day of the sun, “Sunday”—as the Roman day of rest [CJ3.12.2] and that day would be later taken on by a great deal of the Christian community as the new day of rest instead of the Sabbath.

Read more about this in:

1. First Century of Christianity
2. Position and power
3. Raising digression
4. Hellenistic influences
5. Politics and power first priority #1
6. Politics and power first priority #2
7. Politics and power first priority #3 Elevation of Mary and the Holy Spirit
8. The History of the Development of the Trinity Doctrine
9. How did the Trinity Doctrine Develop
10. Altered to fit a Trinity
11. Preexistence in the Divine purpose and Trinity

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History of Christianity

Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch - one of the world's leading historians - reveals the origins of Christianity and explores what it means to be a Christian on BBC 4 and Last broadcast on Saturday on BBC Two.

When Diarmaid MacCulloch was a small boy, his parents used to drive him round historic churches. Little did they know that they had created a monster, with the history of the Christian Church becoming his life's work.
In a series sweeping across four continents, Professor MacCulloch goes in search of Christianity's forgotten origins. He overturns the familiar story that it all began when the apostle Paul took Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. Instead, he shows that the true origins of Christianity lie further east, and that at one point it was poised to triumph in Asia, maybe even in China.
The headquarters of Christianity might well have been Baghdad not Rome, and if that had happened then Western Christianity would have been very different.

2. Catholicism: The Unpredictable Rise of Rome
Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch's grandfather was a devout pillar of the local Anglican church and felt that any dabbling in Catholicism was liable to pollute the English way of life. But now Professor's grandfather isn't around to stop him exploring the extraordinary and unpredictable rise of the Roman Catholic Church.
Over one billion Christians look to Rome, more than half of all Christians on the planet. But how did a small Jewish sect from the backwoods of 1st-century Palestine, which preached humility and the virtue of poverty, become the established religion of western Europe - wealthy, powerful and expecting unfailing obedience from the faithful?
Amongst the surprising revelations, MacCulloch tells how confession was invented by monks on a remote island off the coast of Ireland, and how the Crusades gave Britain the university system.
Above all, it is a story of what can be achieved when you have friends in high places.

3. Orthodoxy - From Empire to Empire
Today, Eastern Orthodox Christianity flourishes in the Balkans and Russia, with over 150 million members worldwide. It is unlike Catholicism or Protestantism - worship is carefully choreographed, icons pull the faithful into a mystical union with Christ, and everywhere there is a symbol of a fierce-looking bird, the double-headed eagle. What story is this ancient drama trying to tell us?
In the third part of his journey into the history of Christianity, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch charts Orthodoxy's extraordinary fight for survival. After its glory days in the eastern Roman Empire, it stood right in the path of Muslim expansion, suffered betrayal by crusading Catholics, was seized by the Russian tsars and faced near-extinction under Soviet communism.
MacCulloch visits the greatest collection of early icons in the Sinai desert, a surviving relic of the iconoclastic crisis in Istanbul and Ivan the Terrible's cathedral in Moscow to discover the secret of Orthodoxy's endurance.

1. Sat 30 Jan 2010:18:30 bij ons 19.30
   BBC Two (England, Northern Ireland only)
2. Sun 31 Jan 2010
   02:30
   BBC Two (Wales only)

- BBC


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+ > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C_05Ej9BNI