As varied as perfume brands are, so is the endless list of Churches. 🤷🏾♂️ I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who’s ever wondered if this was really Jesus’ plan for His Church when He returned to heaven. 🤔 To understand this, I looked at ths history of the Church since the first century. This is mirrored in the prophecy of the four horsemen in Revelation 6. I’ll give a simple summary and you can study it further in your leisure time.
After the death of Jesus, there was a long period spanning many centuries where the truth was cast to the ground before the protestant movement began.
- Initially, the Church was pure and very powerful, spreading like wild fire across the world (the white horseman – AD31-AD100).
- But after this came persecution of the Church (the red horseman – AD100-AD313).
- When this didn’t succeed in wiping out Christianity, then the period of great compromise (the black horseman – AD313-AD538) when the Church was influenced by the State, and paganism was mixed with truth. Emperor Constantine led this compromise in partnership with the Roman Church, as an attempt to unite the crumbling Roman empire and swell the influence of the Church by bringing the pagans into its fold. Practices such as idol worship, pagan sun worship (i.e. Sabbath changed from Saturday to Sunday 💡), pagan holidays, penance, monetary indulgences for sin forgiveness etc. were introduced to make Christianity more appealing to the pagans. The teachings of God’s word were basically replaced with those of men, as the Bible rightly prophesied.
- After this period came a period of spiritual death for the Church (the pale horseman – AD538-AD1798), when the Church received tremendous power from the State and not the word of God. There was the period of the dark ages, one of even greater persucution of Christians. The Bible was largely unavailable; better said, it was mostly available only to the top echelons of the Roman Church and in difficult to read languages, and not to the people who mostly also couldnt’t read.
But God’s truth was not to be cast down forever! 🙅🏾♂️ Before 1798 (when the Pope was captured by Napoleon and he died a year later in Valence) and after, God raised people to bring the truth back to light: Waldenses (the Bible), Huss (obedience), Luther (Grace), Calvin (growth), Anabaptists (baptism), Wesley (holiness), Miller (2nd coming), Ellen G. White (Sabbath) etc.
The truth was however revealed only gradually through the ages into this dark world, just as sunrise happens only gradually till it knocks out the darkness. With each passing protestant, there was a building up of the truth of God. In other words, these people didn’t have all the truth at once but with what God revealed, they ran forward with it and the next protestand built on it as God revealed even more truth to him/her.
The reason we have so many Churches today has its roots in this: men camped along the way and stayed with the truth that had been revealed to them and didn’t keep moving forward. Denominations were formed along the way as God was bringing His truth back to light from the terrible dark ages. Also remember that most of these protestants sprung out of the Roman Church; therefore, what you’ll find is that most Churches till today still have some form of her teachings/practices still in place, be it idol worship, Sunday worship, incense, baptism by sprinkling etc.
So how does one find the truth in such a confused Christian world? 😰 Do you go to the Church to find out what the truth is? No, you go first to the Bible to find out what the truth is, then find a church who’s fundamental teachings are in harmony with the Bible! You judge by its fundamental teachings and not the people you see in the Church, as because the Church is run by fallen human beings, it’ll certainly have its imperfections . This is absolutely the only sure way. 🙌🏾😇 There is an ongoing movement to unite all these different Churches in these end times. Remember, what Jesus preached isn’t a superficial unity in His Church on earth but unity in pure truth just like with His Apostles after His death. So be mindful what you unite with.
Best resource: www.3abn.org/rad ✌🏾
The Langford Files 