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The History of Christianity
The ex-heathen (grafted-in) believers in Yeshua changed God’s Way because of the church fathers’ ignorance of His Hebrew Word, Laws, Torah and God’s Way of Life. We must take a look at their history to ultimately find out the Truth and how God’s Way split into two distinct man-made religions - one which came to be called Christianity.
Christianity did not begin until about the early second century, and it was not called Christianity even then. The Hebrew Scriptures foretold the coming of the Hebrew Messiah for four thousand years - and then He came. Because the history of Christianity begins much later - about one hundred years after Yeshua walked this earth - the story of Yeshua does not belong here (you can find His story in the History of Judaism). We will pick up the history of Christianity at the end of the first century.
All of the Hebrew shaliachim except Yochanan, were gone by the end of the first century. Yochanan (John) was still alive, but he was up in years, in his 90s, and was on the island of Patmos and had no control over what was happening in the congregations in Asia Minor of the grafted-in believers in Yeshua.
After the Temple was destroyed there was no longer a meeting place for large crowds of Yeshua's Hebrew believers, so they began to gather in each other’s homes - although it is believed that many Hebrews were also already meeting in their homes, as the Parush had brought many of the Temple rituals into the Hebrew home. The Hebrew home was essentially a home synagogue. The grafted-in Hebrews were meeting in their homes because they were not allowed in the Temple, nor in the Temple area.
Yeshua's believers were not called Christians at this time. His Teachings (Torah) were still in tact, for the most part, within the congregations and His Way was still being taught. But because of direct Greek influence, not long afterward a few of these grafted-in believing leaders of congregations began to misinterpret and question Yeshua's teachings from the Torah. This was really quite normal as can be found in the letters of the New Testament. By the turn of the century, there were less and less Hebrews in these congregations and the grafted-in believers began to take over. It wasn't a thought out process, it just happened because of circumstances.
About 132AD there was a huge rebellion in Jerusalem by the Hebrews that was stirred up by Bar Kokhba - someone the other Hebrews thought to be the Messiah. The Bar Kokhba rebellion was squashed after about three years, and the Hebrews were banned from Jerusalem by the Romans. The Hebrew leaders of the congregations of Yeshua's believers were replaced by grafted-in believers. It may seem logical, but now the grafted-in believers no longer had any Hebrew believers within their congregations to tell them when they were doing anything wrong - going against God’s Way. The false teachings that Yeshua warned against, had already been slowly creeping into the congregations for the past thirty years or so, and were now taking hold and spreading like wildfire throughout the congregations.
Eventually, even though the Hebrews were allowed back into Jerusalem after a time, the grafted-in believing congregations no longer wanted anything to do with them. While the Greek philosophy and culture had greatly influenced many of the Hebrews in Jerusalem and nearby regions, it had not influenced Yeshua’s Hebrew believers. However, the grafted-in believers were greatly influenced and it didn’t take long for Greek philosophy, intellectualism and false teachings to creep in. This invasive phenomenon had completely overtaken the congregations. The Hebrews were no longer allowed in the congregations of the grafted-in believers. The congregation leaders had no idea that without the knowledge of a Hebrew heart and mind to guide them, they would be lost. They used these Greek ideas, teachings, philosophy and culture to help them understand the Hebrew Scriptures - which was impossible, for a Greek mind has no understanding of Hebrew things at all. The grafted-in believers were destined to be lost - straying far from the true doctrines and teachings of Yeshua...far from God’s Way. They had removed the Hebrew element from their congregations, completely severing the natural root from the wild branch.
The office of bishop did not exist yet, but the Catholics have these four men recorded as being bishops: Linus, Clement and Evaristus were bishops in Rome, and Ignatius was a bishop in Antioch, all about the same time (about the very late first century). It is claimed that these four men studied under the apostle Yochanan, but even though John was alive until about the year 100, their theology was so far off the mark there is no way they could have known him, or studied under him. These four men changed the course and direction of God’s Way dramatically.
The apostasies were a gradual thing, but these men most definitely brought them into the congregations. The original shaliachim spent a lot of their time visiting and writing to the congregations of Yeshua’s grafted-in believers, to continually straighten out their false teachings that they strayed into, and to get them back on track. Once Yochanan went to be with his fathers, there was no one to keep these congregations on the track of the teachings (Torah) of God’s Way - that which Yeshua taught. After Yochanan went to be with his fathers, there was no longer anyone alive who knew God’s Way (Torah). Although these men were later considered part of the church fathers, they did great damage and set things on a course for disaster for the grafted-in believers over the next fifteen hundred years.
About the turn of the first century Linus, Clement and Evaristus got together to discuss the day of the Sabbath, immersing in water and celebrating the Passover season, all of which included whether or not they should remove the Hebrewness of Yeshua’s Teachings (Torah). It seemed that these discussions were taking place a lot more frequently now that Yochanan was gone. And they even took their new ideas to Ignatius, who took them and ran with them in his own writings.
Ignatius was one of the first, if not the actual first, to claim the false doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Ignatius had separated his congregation from the Passover season, celebrating the Roman Spring Eastre fertility queen with the Romans, so now he had to come up with an explanation for the unleavened bread and the wine, which had always been a part of Passover. He just could no longer see that these things were connected to the whole Passover season. If Ignatius had truly studied under Yochanan, he would never have gotten these things mixed up.
The original shaliachim had always taught that Yeshua died on Passover, was buried on the first day of Unleavened Bread, and was raised from the dead on the Day of Firstfruits, which fell on the third day after Yeshua died on the cross that year. They also taught that Yeshua gave His Spirit on Shavuot - completely fulfilling (making whole) all of the Spring Appointed Seasons of God at His first coming.
Even so, Ignatius and several of the others determined this bread and wine thing must be a part of the New Covenant that Yeshua supposedly brought (see Chadashah). It was later determined (voted into doctrine in the fifth century) to be the actual body and blood of Yeshua coming back to life. To continually bring Yeshua back to life in the way the eucharist suggests, would mean that He also has to continually die for our sins over and over again (Romans 6:10 & Hebrews 9:25-27).
So the Passover season had been split into two Roman traditions: Eastre, a Roman Spring fertility goddess worshiping holiday that took the place of celebrating the resurrection day of Yeshua; and the Lord’s Supper took the place of the rest of the Passover celebration, eventually evolving into the eucharist in the fifth century - which has been said to be a copy of a Roman Emperor ritual - and later became the communion ritual in Protestant churches today.
Immersing in water was always a Hebrew commandment of God for the cleansing for righteousness, and was always done as preparation before worship by the priests. The Parush (Pharisees) later brought this ritual into the Hebrew homes and it became the Mikveh - still used to cleanse for righteousness before worship.
But now it had become a baptism for salvation. Many other rituals arose around this baptism, and it soon became the norm to baptize an infant and then the child would be saved. But Salvation is a gift from God to those who choose to believe in Yeshua as God and Messiah. It cannot be bought or given to anyone by anyone but God - one must be able to make the choice him/herself.
The apostasies didn’t happen all at the same time. The bishops continually dissected and questioned doctrines and teachings (a Greek thing to do), and the New Testament books (the Hebrew Scriptures they had already tossed aside thinking they were irrelevant). There was really no excuse for these atrocities, except for the simple fact that they did not understand Yeshua’s Hebrew teachings, nor the Hebrew Scriptures, for they were deep into the Greek ways and learning.
Many of the writings of these second century four men superseded the writings of the original shaliachim and the Hebrew Scriptures, therefore changing the direction of God’s Way indefinitely. In fact, by now it was no longer God’s Way - the church had become spiritual Israel - and was well on its way to becoming a man-made religion called Christianity. Believers in Yeshua (Jesus) wanted nothing to do with the Hebrew ways (Way), nor their language, so they also began to call themselves Catholics (which means universal - if you look up this word today, you’ll find some very disturbing meanings such as: diverse, broad, all-embracing - words that could be concluded to mean the wide road to destruction. Some believe that the word universal is the same as unity, but it is far from the unity of God). The church was now considered the only universal and true church. So the church later came to be called the Catholic Church, and in the fourth century it became the Roman Catholic Church.
Ignatius did the most damage, in that he wrote many letters showing his own opinions, rather than the Torah of Yeshua’s Way. He is truly the main instigator of all that went wrong with the direction the grafted-in congregations took. Everything snowballed from there over the next two centuries, and every time one turned around a new doctrine was introduced as Scriptural fact (and even written into the New Testament). But the true fact was, none of these things were even in the Hebrew Scriptures, which is what Yeshua taught from. Without their Hebrew brothers, these grafted-in branches would not be true branches - branches of the natural olive tree that was Israel.
The bishops of the church in Rome were many in the second century. Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus and Telesphorus were the bishops of the church in Rome, successively. They had each continued to try to persuade the churches in the east to celebrate Eastre with them on the same day, but were not successful in this.
Although Hyginus, a bishop of Rome in the mid-second century, didn’t have to contend with the rebellion of the Hebrews that was going on in Jerusalem, he did have a few other problems of his own - a Gnostic who was spreading heresies. This Gnostic was eventually excommunicated from the church for his false teachings - which just added to all the confusion in the congregations, already riddled with many heresies. Hyginus had gladly passed the leadership over to Pius, since he wasn’t too keen on continuing the discussion of the never-ending Eastre problem, as well as deal with the Gnostic.
Also in the mid-second century, Pius had the first actual physical church built in Rome, and it was the residence of the reigning bishop until the early fourth century, when Constantine offered the Lateran Palace for the bishops to live.
Polycarp, a bishop of the church in Smyrna in the middle of the second century, visited Pius to discuss the differences that existed between the churches in Asia and Rome. These differences were centered on the timing of the Passover festivals, which the churches in Jerusalem and Asia Minor were still celebrating with the Hebrews. Polycarp was a disciple of the shaliachim directly after Yochanan, so he was still quite familiar with the Hebrew festivals that were God’s Way. Polycarp’s church still celebrated all of the Spring Appointed Times of God. But for some time now, the church in Rome had been celebrating the resurrection in combination with the Roman Eastre celebration.
Pius considered himself the leader of all the churches, and felt he had the authority to decree that Passover should be kept on a Sunday, just as the Roman Eastre celebration. Upon Polycarp’s departure, he and Pius agreed to celebrate the resurrection of Yeshua as each pleased, but it was still a sore spot for Pius, and it was still not resolved.
In Rome, it was an entirely different story than in Smyrna. The Hebrew believers in Yeshua that were so much a part of the synagogues in Jerusalem and Asia Minor, were no longer a part of the church in Rome. In Rome, Hebrew believers in Yeshua were no where to be found, so of course this church no longer resembled the Hebrew synagogue of the Hebrew believers in Yeshua that was in Jerusalem. The Catholic church still needed to get the synagogues in the east to see things their way.
By the third century, Clement was deeply firm in his belief of his position, being the head bishop in Rome, he too was convinced he was the head of all churches. He started the ball rolling, and when Boniface III did in fact begin to call himself pope in the seventh century, he had officially usurped the place of God - some popes even thought they were Jesus on earth.
From this point on, the person who stood in the pope’s position, was thought of, for all intents and purposes, as the only authority over God’s Word - the pope’s word became God’s Word. And what the pope said, became what the church said, and therefore became doctrine - and therefore Scripture.
Sometime during all these changes, the Greek word Cristos replaced the Hebrew word Moshiach, so the derivative English form Christian became more widely used rather than Messianic. And Yeshua’s name morphed into the Greek name Iesous, and then the Latin name Jesu, and eventually the English spelling of the Latin Jesu, being Jesus. (The Name Yeshua in English is Salvation. The name Iesous and Jesu mean Joshua in English.)
Origen, a pupil at the seminary in Alexandria, was the father of the allegorical method of interpreting the New Testament books, that had long grown to the status of being Scripture. Through his methodology, the biblical position of Israel and the Hebrew people was allegorized and simply rendered irrelevant. It is Origen’s system of interpretation of Scripture that deepened the “anti-Judaic New Israel” theology, where the Catholic church replaces the Hebrews in the plans and purposes of God, and then later the church in Protestant circles. Origen was also considered to be a heretic for other reasons, and many have thought there was no writer who did any more damage to the Hebrew roots of God’s Way than Origen, but he simply carried on where Linus, Clement, Evaristus and Ignatius left off. Origen was eventually excommunicated from the Church by the Council of Alexandria in 231. Although Origen was labeled a heretic in his lifetime, his influence lived on and greatly increased after his death. Most of the Greek fathers of the church in later centuries would remain under the influence of the evil spirit and works of Origen.
In the West, the new religion, now called Christianity, drew direct inspiration from its Greek sources more and more, and continued to be the religion of the intellectuals and administrators. Greek philosophy had dug deep, and permanent roots for itself in Christianity. Sadly, by this time no one really knew what salvation was. No one truly knew if they were saved or not - they were never quite sure if they had done enough, or said enough prayers, or gave enough money - never really understanding that salvation cannot be bought with money or with works. Although the Catholic church would award salvation to many, in reality salvation can only be given by God.
By about the end of the third century, a succession of bishops had confused Jesus with the Roman sun god, and they saw Jesus as the “Sun of the Resurrection,” and the “Sun of Justice,” confusing Him with the Roman god of the sun. This was the beginning of the false doctrine of the trinity, and also the assumption that Jesus is THE Son of God as a complete and separate person of the triune godhead, rather than God coming to earth as His Own Son (see He is the Son in Who is Yeshua in Lesson III).
In the fourth century, Constantine believed the Catholic’s God had kept His promises to win the battle that won him emperorship over two kingdoms (according to a dream where he too confused Jesus with his sun god Mithras), and in gratitude Constantine immediately rewarded the followers of this Christian God. To Constantine, this God of the Catholics was just another god in his polytheistic mind, so he professed his belief in this Catholic God, but his conversion was never a true conversion. He never did display any interest in Christian ethics.
Constantine was determined to quench the various divisions within Christianity. One of the problems was the continuing divisions over the proper date and celebration of the Passover and Eastre. It wasn’t that Constantine believed in any of these things, he simply didn’t like the disunity of it all. To Constantine, the moral and theological squabbles that divided his new religion were causing problems within his newly united empire, and he wanted these little battles to stop.
Constantine presided over the first council at Nicaea in an effort to do just that. He included this “double Passover” issue at the Council of Nicaea in 325. He had united his empire, now he intended to deliver the church from “internal sedition” as well. Constantine ruled in favor of his Roman holiday, so Eastre on a Sunday had now officially replaced the festivals of Passover, Unleavened Bread and Firstfruits, when the resurrection of the Hebrew Yeshua really took place (see Council of Nicaea on Catholic website).
Although Constantine is blamed for changing the church, he wasn’t the original instigator of these changes. Many of the changes had already been introduced over two hundred years before Constantine’s time. And so, at the Council of Nicaea the Eastre problem was settled once and for all, and a more permanent separation was made from the Hebrews and their Passover.
At the insistence of the bishops during his time, Constantine eventually made it illegal to celebrate Hebrew festivals and to celebrate with any Hebrew believers in Yeshua. But even though it was illegal in the Roman Empire, the two groups still managed to mingle somewhere on the earth for quite some time.
Religion and politics were virtually entwined, as was the Roman way. Constantine made himself head of the Catholic church, which was now an empire like Rome itself, and like Rome, eternal. Constantine continued to change his new eternal religion so that it not only served his subjects better, but so that it served him better. He decreed a strict toleration of his old beliefs, so Roman polytheistic worship remained a potent presence at the center of Roman life (and Catholic life as well) in his empire. Roman polytheistic worship gave the impression of dwindling, but in actuality it simply melded in, changing the names of the gods to Christian saint names.
Constantine supposedly wrote a decree which was known as the Donation of Constantine, in which he transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the Bishop, upon his deathbed, about the year 337. Although this document was determined to be fraudulent in later years, it was still used by all bishops to confiscate large territories in Italy. Emperors have always held the title of Supreme Pontiff, or Pontifex Maximus, a title Constantine had also assumed. Because of Constantine’s donation, this title was used by the Catholic bishops as well, as a part of Constantine’s gift of his authority - and was still used in later years.
Constantine was baptized in the year 337, by Julius, who had just become the bishop of Rome earlier in the year. Constantine died shortly afterward. Constantine’s power shift to the holy Roman Catholic church after his death, was the beginning of the end for the holy Roman Empire itself.
For the next seventeen hundred years or so, the Catholic church was very dark spiritually. Years later, this time period was appropriately labeled the Dark Ages. What followed for the next seventeen hundred years was evidence enough of the holy Roman Catholic church’s brutality, and complete lack of Biblical knowledge - i.e. the Hebrew Way of Life, including God’s commandments and statutes. They tried to look pious, and commanded the respect of the peasants, but the Catholic bishops did not understand the Scriptures. Today, the doctrines and practices that the Catholic church clings to cannot be found anywhere in God’s Word, and were never taught by any of the original shaliachim - and especially not by Yeshua.
It was in the early fifth century that an argument arose between the bishops of the Catholic church about whether Mary was the mother of Jesus, or the mother of God. In the year 431, at the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus, with more than two hundred bishops attending, was when Mary was voted in and declared to be the Mother of God by the holy Roman Catholic church. This new title gave her similar qualities to God in their eyes. And it was determined that Mary was the mediator between mankind and Jesus. She was later given other godly qualities, and eventually became a person to be venerated, which blasphemed God and His First Commandment. Mary was never supposed to be anyone but a very willing vessel of God. This is not in the Bible anywhere, and it was never a part of God’s Way.
In the year 787, the Second Council of Nicaea convened. This council determined in favor of the veneration of holy images. Again, breaking a Commandment of God - the Second. This venerating (which is the same as worshiping no matter what anyone says) of Mary was pure fabrication.
After Islam’s conquest of taking Jerusalem in mid-seventh century (638), Muslims and Catholics continued to attack, and counter attack each other, each as barbaric as the other. While the Catholics considered themselves Christians and the rightful heirs of God’s kingdom, they were really just as much barbarians as those they battled. They continued to do all these atrocities in the name of Jesus. These battles continued for the next two to three hundred years.
There was a split between the Eastern Orthodoxy Catholic church and the Roman Catholic church that became known as the Great Schism of 1054. Their argument was over political and doctrinal differences, as they always are. There were other theological disputes as well, such as whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the eucharist - which was a false doctrine and teaching to begin with. And then there was the biggest dispute of all: the church of Rome’s claim to be the head and mother of all the churches - claiming succession to the chair of Peter. This fundamental breach has never been healed within the Catholic church - until just recently (over 1000 years later).
In the eleventh century the Catholics felt the only way to win Jerusalem back was to create an army. They needed people who could be warriors and fight. Secular soldiers were recruited, given a cloth cross and made to take vows. They were also promised salvation and penance for past sins, if they would fight for the church. It was stressed that only those who were responsible for retaking Jerusalem would this be possible, causing an overwhelming popular support for the first crusade. These secular soldiers were now Soldiers of the Church. The Crusader army had been created.
The Catholic Crusaders aimed to take back Jerusalem for what they called the Catholic church for God. They had suddenly been given a central place in the conception of the just war by the pope himself. Most of the men who were promised salvation were not Catholics. But they left their homes and families unprotected to fight in this holy war, having no idea what they were getting into, nor who they were really fighting against. Since these crusaders, who called themselves pilgrims of the cross or soldiers of the church, truly did not know who their real enemy was, their first target was not the Muslims. It was the Hebrews. The Crusaders were unable to distinguish clearly between the various enemies of Christ about whom they had heard so many tales from the equally ignorant priests. They called both the Hebrews and the Muslims the enemies of God, and they were all equally detestable in the eyes of the Crusaders. The Crusaders went to wipe out or to convert any non-Catholic they found in their path.
Many Hebrews were annihilated by the Crusaders, in an effort to clear the path to Jerusalem. The Crusaders burned synagogues, destroyed Torah scrolls, and desecrated Hebrew cemeteries wherever they went. The slaughtering continued for many years, and all this was done in the name of Jesus.
It was a long battle, and a complete butchery, but when it was all over, the temple area of the city was piled high with bodies and blood - both Hebrews and Muslims. Jerusalem had been taken back for the Catholic church, but at the most horrible cost to mankind.
The Knights Templar, a group of nine secular knights of the soldiers of the church, had been fighting in the crusades for several years when they joined together to dedicate their entire lives to the service of the Holy Land, taking monastic-order-like vows. These nine knights eventually turned into a whole order which consisted of thousands of secular recruits, taking the same vows as the original Knights. They became an order where a soldier could hold his head high, no matter where he came from - converting from the angry, the independent, the aggressive and the resentful, to living a simulation of a holy life. To be a part of the Knights Templar order was a high honor.
For three hundred years they continued as a respected order for the church, but King Philip wanted to get his hands on the Templar wealth. It wasn’t an easy task since the Knights were excluded from secular law and torture, but after much planning, infiltration and deceit, King Philip got his wish.
In the early fourteenth century, eight years after he found a way around the no-torture rule, King Philip managed to have the Knights tortured until confessions were made. With over two thousand confessions, in Paris in the year 1314, Jacques de Molay and Geoffrey de Charnay (leaders of the Knights Templar at the time) were burned at the stake.
The Spanish Inquisition had been instituted by Pope Innocent III to prevent conversos from engaging in Jewish practices - conversos were Jews who had been forcefully converted to Christianity. But this was eventually deemed inadequate, and they began expelling all Jews from Spain because of the “great harm suffered by Catholics from contact and communication with Jews who had converted, who always attempted in various ways to seduce faithful Catholics from their Holy Catholic Faith.” The Inquisitions lasted from about 1233 until the late eighteenth century - more than five hundred years.
About half of the eighty thousand Jews who left Spain in 1492, chose emigration to Portugal. But only five years later they were forced to leave Portugal too, in 1497. Most Jews of these countries chose to be baptized into the Catholic religion before the deadline to avoid expulsion. But even this didn’t protect the Jews from the Inquisitions, because they were still suspected of practicing Judaism.
It would be another two hundred years or so before the true nature of the Inquisitions was exposed, and then it still continued for several hundred more years. The Inquisitions not only hunted for false converts from Judaism, but also searched for false or relapsed converts among the Moriscos - converts from Islam. Initially the Moriscos were not severely persecuted by the Inquisitions, but experienced evangelization without torture, a policy supposedly not followed with the conversos.
There were some Protestants who were tried in these Inquisitions, but none were executed. It was during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when the bulk of these trials took place, which often resulted in burning at the stake for the conversos. The Inquisitions under Ferdinand and Isabella alone had several thousand conversos burned at the stake. The Inquisitions were abolished on July 15, 1834 by a Royal Decree signed by regent Maria Christina of the Two Sicilys. But it was temporarily reinstated during the First Carlist War, to protect the Church. The Church carried out these Inquisitions as much for taking the property from the conversos as for defending their faith. They were called trials, but they always ended up in execution for the Jews.
In the fifteenth century, Moors confiscated the lands of the Greek Catholic families and then they were transformed into fiefs (land held for feudal service). It left the Catholics at the mercy of the feudal lords, who were warriors of the Islamic Empire. This situation was one of increasing oppression for the Catholics, and their priesthood had been drastically altered. Catholic priests were now acting as civil representatives of their people in feudal matters, which they eventually discovered actually gave them an advantage. But because of this position, even more apostasies developed and took hold within the Catholic Church.
Many attempts had been made to question the false teachings of the Catholic church in Europe, but it all came to a head in the early sixteenth century. This one particular Catholic German Monk questioned why some of the things he was taught were done. The Church leaders just scoffed at him and told him that what was in the Canon Law was approved by the Church Fathers - and they were the final word on all church matters. It was not his place to question Canon Law and the church Fathers.
After being sent to Germany, where he had access to the New Testament, God had revealed something to the spirit of this Catholic German Monk named Martin Luther. Many of the traditions of his church just didn’t seem right to Martin Luther. And now that he had read the New Testament, he wondered about them even more.
After reading and studying the New Testament, Martin Luther finally came to a conclusion, and disagreed with the church leaders. So he sat down one night and wrote out all his complaints, that he based on the New Testament. Then he posted this very long list on the main church’s door in hopes that everyone would see it. Luther only wanted to bring reform to the church, but in reality Martin Luther was challenging the pope’s authority.
The Catholic’s idea of living for God was limited to his humanity and intellectualism. They had no concept of God’s Way and commandments, and couldn’t even conceive of being a follower of Jesus any other way than what they were told by the Catholic church leaders. They did not know that one must have a spiritual experience to know God. It wasn’t just a choice or a belief system, it was the rebirth of a dead spirit - an actual reconnection to God.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century was a movement that led to a breech, or rather war, between the Catholic church and the reformers. Because of the beliefs and practices of these reformers, these people eventually came to be known as Separatists, Puritans and Protestants. When the Roman Catholic church refused to heed Luther’s call to reform and return to biblical doctrines and practices, the Reformation began.
The Church had again split - there was the Catholic church (East and West) who clung to all the false teachings of the Catholic church Fathers. And then there were the Separatists and Puritans who later came to be called the Protestants for their protests of the Catholic church’s false doctrines.
From the Reformation four major divisions or traditions of Protestantism would eventually emerge: Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, and Anglican - making the Protestant church not much different than the Catholic church, with their many sects and false doctrines. (The Anabaptist’s later became the Amish we know today, but began as the Mennonites. Many of the Old Order of the Amish do not believe in Salvation. The Amish go back only about 300 years.)
Demanding the Truth had caused many more wars between the Catholics and the Protestants. Many people died for their beliefs, whether they be for the Catholic church or the Protestants. The Catholic church could not see that they were wrong in their false teachings, and the Protestants wouldn’t stop trying to show them the error of their ways. These constant squabbles, that many times turned into all out wars, showed that neither of them truly knew God’s Way. God’s true Way was still hidden from even the Protestants. It would be another five hundred years before some of the Protestants would even begin to see the real truth of the Bible.
In the seventeenth century, many of the Protestants of England, who called themselves Separatists because they separated themselves from the Church of England, left England and ventured over to the new land so they could practice their religion safely, for the wars between them and the Catholics were still going on. It seemed that whenever the Queen of England would change, so would the preferred religion of their country. So they went in search of a new country for freedom of religion.
The Puritans stayed in England a bit longer, thinking they could still reform the Church of England from within. They did this at great risk to their lives. If they were caught, they were branded and an ear was cut off, as a warning to others. And some were killed. But eventually, they too would find their way to the new land - forced to live in the colonies of a new land, because life had become too unbearable in England.
But Separatists and Puritans found that it was no different in this new place called Boston, because they weren’t free of England. And the founders of this land had their own ideas of what religion should really be, and they wanted a town where only one religion would be acceptable - their version and interpretation of Christianity. Anyone who had any differing idea to what the Protestant church leaders thought the New Testament meant, were imprisoned as heretics. This new land proved to be the same as the old.
This new country was supposedly founded on principles of freedom and of God, but these principles were rooted deep within the minds of the affluent - a government formed by man, not God. Hiding behind the supposed idea that this country was founded on Godly principles, the ultimate bluff was only beginning - the lie of the American Dream had just begun. After almost two hundred thirty-eight years, this new land has completely lost touch with God.
Yeshua warned us in the gospels, almost from the beginning, that false teachings have been invading the congregations and leading people astray. Most Protestants think they have left all false teachings behind, but they are blind to the real truth of this matter.
Today, there is what has become dubbed the Jewish Roots movement which I believe to be God’s first step in bringing us back into His Way. There are many movements within this movement, most of them entirely wrong. And because of all these different (and wrong) beliefs within this movement, they are being called cults. But I believe God will eventually work out all the kinks - He will maneuver us where He wants us to be and how He wants us to live.
After reading how Christianity came to be, I hope you will search out the facts for yourself. You will not be able to deny how we all came to believe in a bunch of lies. I urge you to stop believing the lies. Learn all you can about your Hebrew heritage and then embrace it. It will take time, but I know you can do it. I believe God will do a quick work in you!
The ex-heathen (grafted-in) believers in Yeshua changed God’s Way because of the church fathers’ ignorance of His Hebrew Word, Laws, Torah and God’s Way of Life. We must take a look at their history to ultimately find out the Truth and how God’s Way split into two distinct man-made religions - one which came to be called Christianity.
Christianity did not begin until about the early second century, and it was not called Christianity even then. The Hebrew Scriptures foretold the coming of the Hebrew Messiah for four thousand years - and then He came. Because the history of Christianity begins much later - about one hundred years after Yeshua walked this earth - the story of Yeshua does not belong here (you can find His story in the History of Judaism). We will pick up the history of Christianity at the end of the first century.
All of the Hebrew shaliachim except Yochanan, were gone by the end of the first century. Yochanan (John) was still alive, but he was up in years, in his 90s, and was on the island of Patmos and had no control over what was happening in the congregations in Asia Minor of the grafted-in believers in Yeshua.
After the Temple was destroyed there was no longer a meeting place for large crowds of Yeshua's Hebrew believers, so they began to gather in each other’s homes - although it is believed that many Hebrews were also already meeting in their homes, as the Parush had brought many of the Temple rituals into the Hebrew home. The Hebrew home was essentially a home synagogue. The grafted-in Hebrews were meeting in their homes because they were not allowed in the Temple, nor in the Temple area.
Yeshua's believers were not called Christians at this time. His Teachings (Torah) were still in tact, for the most part, within the congregations and His Way was still being taught. But because of direct Greek influence, not long afterward a few of these grafted-in believing leaders of congregations began to misinterpret and question Yeshua's teachings from the Torah. This was really quite normal as can be found in the letters of the New Testament. By the turn of the century, there were less and less Hebrews in these congregations and the grafted-in believers began to take over. It wasn't a thought out process, it just happened because of circumstances.
About 132AD there was a huge rebellion in Jerusalem by the Hebrews that was stirred up by Bar Kokhba - someone the other Hebrews thought to be the Messiah. The Bar Kokhba rebellion was squashed after about three years, and the Hebrews were banned from Jerusalem by the Romans. The Hebrew leaders of the congregations of Yeshua's believers were replaced by grafted-in believers. It may seem logical, but now the grafted-in believers no longer had any Hebrew believers within their congregations to tell them when they were doing anything wrong - going against God’s Way. The false teachings that Yeshua warned against, had already been slowly creeping into the congregations for the past thirty years or so, and were now taking hold and spreading like wildfire throughout the congregations.
Eventually, even though the Hebrews were allowed back into Jerusalem after a time, the grafted-in believing congregations no longer wanted anything to do with them. While the Greek philosophy and culture had greatly influenced many of the Hebrews in Jerusalem and nearby regions, it had not influenced Yeshua’s Hebrew believers. However, the grafted-in believers were greatly influenced and it didn’t take long for Greek philosophy, intellectualism and false teachings to creep in. This invasive phenomenon had completely overtaken the congregations. The Hebrews were no longer allowed in the congregations of the grafted-in believers. The congregation leaders had no idea that without the knowledge of a Hebrew heart and mind to guide them, they would be lost. They used these Greek ideas, teachings, philosophy and culture to help them understand the Hebrew Scriptures - which was impossible, for a Greek mind has no understanding of Hebrew things at all. The grafted-in believers were destined to be lost - straying far from the true doctrines and teachings of Yeshua...far from God’s Way. They had removed the Hebrew element from their congregations, completely severing the natural root from the wild branch.
The office of bishop did not exist yet, but the Catholics have these four men recorded as being bishops: Linus, Clement and Evaristus were bishops in Rome, and Ignatius was a bishop in Antioch, all about the same time (about the very late first century). It is claimed that these four men studied under the apostle Yochanan, but even though John was alive until about the year 100, their theology was so far off the mark there is no way they could have known him, or studied under him. These four men changed the course and direction of God’s Way dramatically.
The apostasies were a gradual thing, but these men most definitely brought them into the congregations. The original shaliachim spent a lot of their time visiting and writing to the congregations of Yeshua’s grafted-in believers, to continually straighten out their false teachings that they strayed into, and to get them back on track. Once Yochanan went to be with his fathers, there was no one to keep these congregations on the track of the teachings (Torah) of God’s Way - that which Yeshua taught. After Yochanan went to be with his fathers, there was no longer anyone alive who knew God’s Way (Torah). Although these men were later considered part of the church fathers, they did great damage and set things on a course for disaster for the grafted-in believers over the next fifteen hundred years.
About the turn of the first century Linus, Clement and Evaristus got together to discuss the day of the Sabbath, immersing in water and celebrating the Passover season, all of which included whether or not they should remove the Hebrewness of Yeshua’s Teachings (Torah). It seemed that these discussions were taking place a lot more frequently now that Yochanan was gone. And they even took their new ideas to Ignatius, who took them and ran with them in his own writings.
Ignatius was one of the first, if not the actual first, to claim the false doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Ignatius had separated his congregation from the Passover season, celebrating the Roman Spring Eastre fertility queen with the Romans, so now he had to come up with an explanation for the unleavened bread and the wine, which had always been a part of Passover. He just could no longer see that these things were connected to the whole Passover season. If Ignatius had truly studied under Yochanan, he would never have gotten these things mixed up.
The original shaliachim had always taught that Yeshua died on Passover, was buried on the first day of Unleavened Bread, and was raised from the dead on the Day of Firstfruits, which fell on the third day after Yeshua died on the cross that year. They also taught that Yeshua gave His Spirit on Shavuot - completely fulfilling (making whole) all of the Spring Appointed Seasons of God at His first coming.
Even so, Ignatius and several of the others determined this bread and wine thing must be a part of the New Covenant that Yeshua supposedly brought (see Chadashah). It was later determined (voted into doctrine in the fifth century) to be the actual body and blood of Yeshua coming back to life. To continually bring Yeshua back to life in the way the eucharist suggests, would mean that He also has to continually die for our sins over and over again (Romans 6:10 & Hebrews 9:25-27).
So the Passover season had been split into two Roman traditions: Eastre, a Roman Spring fertility goddess worshiping holiday that took the place of celebrating the resurrection day of Yeshua; and the Lord’s Supper took the place of the rest of the Passover celebration, eventually evolving into the eucharist in the fifth century - which has been said to be a copy of a Roman Emperor ritual - and later became the communion ritual in Protestant churches today.
Immersing in water was always a Hebrew commandment of God for the cleansing for righteousness, and was always done as preparation before worship by the priests. The Parush (Pharisees) later brought this ritual into the Hebrew homes and it became the Mikveh - still used to cleanse for righteousness before worship.
But now it had become a baptism for salvation. Many other rituals arose around this baptism, and it soon became the norm to baptize an infant and then the child would be saved. But Salvation is a gift from God to those who choose to believe in Yeshua as God and Messiah. It cannot be bought or given to anyone by anyone but God - one must be able to make the choice him/herself.
The apostasies didn’t happen all at the same time. The bishops continually dissected and questioned doctrines and teachings (a Greek thing to do), and the New Testament books (the Hebrew Scriptures they had already tossed aside thinking they were irrelevant). There was really no excuse for these atrocities, except for the simple fact that they did not understand Yeshua’s Hebrew teachings, nor the Hebrew Scriptures, for they were deep into the Greek ways and learning.
Many of the writings of these second century four men superseded the writings of the original shaliachim and the Hebrew Scriptures, therefore changing the direction of God’s Way indefinitely. In fact, by now it was no longer God’s Way - the church had become spiritual Israel - and was well on its way to becoming a man-made religion called Christianity. Believers in Yeshua (Jesus) wanted nothing to do with the Hebrew ways (Way), nor their language, so they also began to call themselves Catholics (which means universal - if you look up this word today, you’ll find some very disturbing meanings such as: diverse, broad, all-embracing - words that could be concluded to mean the wide road to destruction. Some believe that the word universal is the same as unity, but it is far from the unity of God). The church was now considered the only universal and true church. So the church later came to be called the Catholic Church, and in the fourth century it became the Roman Catholic Church.
Ignatius did the most damage, in that he wrote many letters showing his own opinions, rather than the Torah of Yeshua’s Way. He is truly the main instigator of all that went wrong with the direction the grafted-in congregations took. Everything snowballed from there over the next two centuries, and every time one turned around a new doctrine was introduced as Scriptural fact (and even written into the New Testament). But the true fact was, none of these things were even in the Hebrew Scriptures, which is what Yeshua taught from. Without their Hebrew brothers, these grafted-in branches would not be true branches - branches of the natural olive tree that was Israel.
The bishops of the church in Rome were many in the second century. Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus and Telesphorus were the bishops of the church in Rome, successively. They had each continued to try to persuade the churches in the east to celebrate Eastre with them on the same day, but were not successful in this.
Although Hyginus, a bishop of Rome in the mid-second century, didn’t have to contend with the rebellion of the Hebrews that was going on in Jerusalem, he did have a few other problems of his own - a Gnostic who was spreading heresies. This Gnostic was eventually excommunicated from the church for his false teachings - which just added to all the confusion in the congregations, already riddled with many heresies. Hyginus had gladly passed the leadership over to Pius, since he wasn’t too keen on continuing the discussion of the never-ending Eastre problem, as well as deal with the Gnostic.
Also in the mid-second century, Pius had the first actual physical church built in Rome, and it was the residence of the reigning bishop until the early fourth century, when Constantine offered the Lateran Palace for the bishops to live.
Polycarp, a bishop of the church in Smyrna in the middle of the second century, visited Pius to discuss the differences that existed between the churches in Asia and Rome. These differences were centered on the timing of the Passover festivals, which the churches in Jerusalem and Asia Minor were still celebrating with the Hebrews. Polycarp was a disciple of the shaliachim directly after Yochanan, so he was still quite familiar with the Hebrew festivals that were God’s Way. Polycarp’s church still celebrated all of the Spring Appointed Times of God. But for some time now, the church in Rome had been celebrating the resurrection in combination with the Roman Eastre celebration.
Pius considered himself the leader of all the churches, and felt he had the authority to decree that Passover should be kept on a Sunday, just as the Roman Eastre celebration. Upon Polycarp’s departure, he and Pius agreed to celebrate the resurrection of Yeshua as each pleased, but it was still a sore spot for Pius, and it was still not resolved.
In Rome, it was an entirely different story than in Smyrna. The Hebrew believers in Yeshua that were so much a part of the synagogues in Jerusalem and Asia Minor, were no longer a part of the church in Rome. In Rome, Hebrew believers in Yeshua were no where to be found, so of course this church no longer resembled the Hebrew synagogue of the Hebrew believers in Yeshua that was in Jerusalem. The Catholic church still needed to get the synagogues in the east to see things their way.
By the third century, Clement was deeply firm in his belief of his position, being the head bishop in Rome, he too was convinced he was the head of all churches. He started the ball rolling, and when Boniface III did in fact begin to call himself pope in the seventh century, he had officially usurped the place of God - some popes even thought they were Jesus on earth.
From this point on, the person who stood in the pope’s position, was thought of, for all intents and purposes, as the only authority over God’s Word - the pope’s word became God’s Word. And what the pope said, became what the church said, and therefore became doctrine - and therefore Scripture.
Sometime during all these changes, the Greek word Cristos replaced the Hebrew word Moshiach, so the derivative English form Christian became more widely used rather than Messianic. And Yeshua’s name morphed into the Greek name Iesous, and then the Latin name Jesu, and eventually the English spelling of the Latin Jesu, being Jesus. (The Name Yeshua in English is Salvation. The name Iesous and Jesu mean Joshua in English.)
Origen, a pupil at the seminary in Alexandria, was the father of the allegorical method of interpreting the New Testament books, that had long grown to the status of being Scripture. Through his methodology, the biblical position of Israel and the Hebrew people was allegorized and simply rendered irrelevant. It is Origen’s system of interpretation of Scripture that deepened the “anti-Judaic New Israel” theology, where the Catholic church replaces the Hebrews in the plans and purposes of God, and then later the church in Protestant circles. Origen was also considered to be a heretic for other reasons, and many have thought there was no writer who did any more damage to the Hebrew roots of God’s Way than Origen, but he simply carried on where Linus, Clement, Evaristus and Ignatius left off. Origen was eventually excommunicated from the Church by the Council of Alexandria in 231. Although Origen was labeled a heretic in his lifetime, his influence lived on and greatly increased after his death. Most of the Greek fathers of the church in later centuries would remain under the influence of the evil spirit and works of Origen.
In the West, the new religion, now called Christianity, drew direct inspiration from its Greek sources more and more, and continued to be the religion of the intellectuals and administrators. Greek philosophy had dug deep, and permanent roots for itself in Christianity. Sadly, by this time no one really knew what salvation was. No one truly knew if they were saved or not - they were never quite sure if they had done enough, or said enough prayers, or gave enough money - never really understanding that salvation cannot be bought with money or with works. Although the Catholic church would award salvation to many, in reality salvation can only be given by God.
By about the end of the third century, a succession of bishops had confused Jesus with the Roman sun god, and they saw Jesus as the “Sun of the Resurrection,” and the “Sun of Justice,” confusing Him with the Roman god of the sun. This was the beginning of the false doctrine of the trinity, and also the assumption that Jesus is THE Son of God as a complete and separate person of the triune godhead, rather than God coming to earth as His Own Son (see He is the Son in Who is Yeshua in Lesson III).
In the fourth century, Constantine believed the Catholic’s God had kept His promises to win the battle that won him emperorship over two kingdoms (according to a dream where he too confused Jesus with his sun god Mithras), and in gratitude Constantine immediately rewarded the followers of this Christian God. To Constantine, this God of the Catholics was just another god in his polytheistic mind, so he professed his belief in this Catholic God, but his conversion was never a true conversion. He never did display any interest in Christian ethics.
Constantine was determined to quench the various divisions within Christianity. One of the problems was the continuing divisions over the proper date and celebration of the Passover and Eastre. It wasn’t that Constantine believed in any of these things, he simply didn’t like the disunity of it all. To Constantine, the moral and theological squabbles that divided his new religion were causing problems within his newly united empire, and he wanted these little battles to stop.
Constantine presided over the first council at Nicaea in an effort to do just that. He included this “double Passover” issue at the Council of Nicaea in 325. He had united his empire, now he intended to deliver the church from “internal sedition” as well. Constantine ruled in favor of his Roman holiday, so Eastre on a Sunday had now officially replaced the festivals of Passover, Unleavened Bread and Firstfruits, when the resurrection of the Hebrew Yeshua really took place (see Council of Nicaea on Catholic website).
Although Constantine is blamed for changing the church, he wasn’t the original instigator of these changes. Many of the changes had already been introduced over two hundred years before Constantine’s time. And so, at the Council of Nicaea the Eastre problem was settled once and for all, and a more permanent separation was made from the Hebrews and their Passover.
At the insistence of the bishops during his time, Constantine eventually made it illegal to celebrate Hebrew festivals and to celebrate with any Hebrew believers in Yeshua. But even though it was illegal in the Roman Empire, the two groups still managed to mingle somewhere on the earth for quite some time.
Religion and politics were virtually entwined, as was the Roman way. Constantine made himself head of the Catholic church, which was now an empire like Rome itself, and like Rome, eternal. Constantine continued to change his new eternal religion so that it not only served his subjects better, but so that it served him better. He decreed a strict toleration of his old beliefs, so Roman polytheistic worship remained a potent presence at the center of Roman life (and Catholic life as well) in his empire. Roman polytheistic worship gave the impression of dwindling, but in actuality it simply melded in, changing the names of the gods to Christian saint names.
Constantine supposedly wrote a decree which was known as the Donation of Constantine, in which he transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the Bishop, upon his deathbed, about the year 337. Although this document was determined to be fraudulent in later years, it was still used by all bishops to confiscate large territories in Italy. Emperors have always held the title of Supreme Pontiff, or Pontifex Maximus, a title Constantine had also assumed. Because of Constantine’s donation, this title was used by the Catholic bishops as well, as a part of Constantine’s gift of his authority - and was still used in later years.
Constantine was baptized in the year 337, by Julius, who had just become the bishop of Rome earlier in the year. Constantine died shortly afterward. Constantine’s power shift to the holy Roman Catholic church after his death, was the beginning of the end for the holy Roman Empire itself.
For the next seventeen hundred years or so, the Catholic church was very dark spiritually. Years later, this time period was appropriately labeled the Dark Ages. What followed for the next seventeen hundred years was evidence enough of the holy Roman Catholic church’s brutality, and complete lack of Biblical knowledge - i.e. the Hebrew Way of Life, including God’s commandments and statutes. They tried to look pious, and commanded the respect of the peasants, but the Catholic bishops did not understand the Scriptures. Today, the doctrines and practices that the Catholic church clings to cannot be found anywhere in God’s Word, and were never taught by any of the original shaliachim - and especially not by Yeshua.
It was in the early fifth century that an argument arose between the bishops of the Catholic church about whether Mary was the mother of Jesus, or the mother of God. In the year 431, at the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus, with more than two hundred bishops attending, was when Mary was voted in and declared to be the Mother of God by the holy Roman Catholic church. This new title gave her similar qualities to God in their eyes. And it was determined that Mary was the mediator between mankind and Jesus. She was later given other godly qualities, and eventually became a person to be venerated, which blasphemed God and His First Commandment. Mary was never supposed to be anyone but a very willing vessel of God. This is not in the Bible anywhere, and it was never a part of God’s Way.
In the year 787, the Second Council of Nicaea convened. This council determined in favor of the veneration of holy images. Again, breaking a Commandment of God - the Second. This venerating (which is the same as worshiping no matter what anyone says) of Mary was pure fabrication.
After Islam’s conquest of taking Jerusalem in mid-seventh century (638), Muslims and Catholics continued to attack, and counter attack each other, each as barbaric as the other. While the Catholics considered themselves Christians and the rightful heirs of God’s kingdom, they were really just as much barbarians as those they battled. They continued to do all these atrocities in the name of Jesus. These battles continued for the next two to three hundred years.
There was a split between the Eastern Orthodoxy Catholic church and the Roman Catholic church that became known as the Great Schism of 1054. Their argument was over political and doctrinal differences, as they always are. There were other theological disputes as well, such as whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the eucharist - which was a false doctrine and teaching to begin with. And then there was the biggest dispute of all: the church of Rome’s claim to be the head and mother of all the churches - claiming succession to the chair of Peter. This fundamental breach has never been healed within the Catholic church - until just recently (over 1000 years later).
In the eleventh century the Catholics felt the only way to win Jerusalem back was to create an army. They needed people who could be warriors and fight. Secular soldiers were recruited, given a cloth cross and made to take vows. They were also promised salvation and penance for past sins, if they would fight for the church. It was stressed that only those who were responsible for retaking Jerusalem would this be possible, causing an overwhelming popular support for the first crusade. These secular soldiers were now Soldiers of the Church. The Crusader army had been created.
The Catholic Crusaders aimed to take back Jerusalem for what they called the Catholic church for God. They had suddenly been given a central place in the conception of the just war by the pope himself. Most of the men who were promised salvation were not Catholics. But they left their homes and families unprotected to fight in this holy war, having no idea what they were getting into, nor who they were really fighting against. Since these crusaders, who called themselves pilgrims of the cross or soldiers of the church, truly did not know who their real enemy was, their first target was not the Muslims. It was the Hebrews. The Crusaders were unable to distinguish clearly between the various enemies of Christ about whom they had heard so many tales from the equally ignorant priests. They called both the Hebrews and the Muslims the enemies of God, and they were all equally detestable in the eyes of the Crusaders. The Crusaders went to wipe out or to convert any non-Catholic they found in their path.
Many Hebrews were annihilated by the Crusaders, in an effort to clear the path to Jerusalem. The Crusaders burned synagogues, destroyed Torah scrolls, and desecrated Hebrew cemeteries wherever they went. The slaughtering continued for many years, and all this was done in the name of Jesus.
It was a long battle, and a complete butchery, but when it was all over, the temple area of the city was piled high with bodies and blood - both Hebrews and Muslims. Jerusalem had been taken back for the Catholic church, but at the most horrible cost to mankind.
The Knights Templar, a group of nine secular knights of the soldiers of the church, had been fighting in the crusades for several years when they joined together to dedicate their entire lives to the service of the Holy Land, taking monastic-order-like vows. These nine knights eventually turned into a whole order which consisted of thousands of secular recruits, taking the same vows as the original Knights. They became an order where a soldier could hold his head high, no matter where he came from - converting from the angry, the independent, the aggressive and the resentful, to living a simulation of a holy life. To be a part of the Knights Templar order was a high honor.
For three hundred years they continued as a respected order for the church, but King Philip wanted to get his hands on the Templar wealth. It wasn’t an easy task since the Knights were excluded from secular law and torture, but after much planning, infiltration and deceit, King Philip got his wish.
In the early fourteenth century, eight years after he found a way around the no-torture rule, King Philip managed to have the Knights tortured until confessions were made. With over two thousand confessions, in Paris in the year 1314, Jacques de Molay and Geoffrey de Charnay (leaders of the Knights Templar at the time) were burned at the stake.
The Spanish Inquisition had been instituted by Pope Innocent III to prevent conversos from engaging in Jewish practices - conversos were Jews who had been forcefully converted to Christianity. But this was eventually deemed inadequate, and they began expelling all Jews from Spain because of the “great harm suffered by Catholics from contact and communication with Jews who had converted, who always attempted in various ways to seduce faithful Catholics from their Holy Catholic Faith.” The Inquisitions lasted from about 1233 until the late eighteenth century - more than five hundred years.
About half of the eighty thousand Jews who left Spain in 1492, chose emigration to Portugal. But only five years later they were forced to leave Portugal too, in 1497. Most Jews of these countries chose to be baptized into the Catholic religion before the deadline to avoid expulsion. But even this didn’t protect the Jews from the Inquisitions, because they were still suspected of practicing Judaism.
It would be another two hundred years or so before the true nature of the Inquisitions was exposed, and then it still continued for several hundred more years. The Inquisitions not only hunted for false converts from Judaism, but also searched for false or relapsed converts among the Moriscos - converts from Islam. Initially the Moriscos were not severely persecuted by the Inquisitions, but experienced evangelization without torture, a policy supposedly not followed with the conversos.
There were some Protestants who were tried in these Inquisitions, but none were executed. It was during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when the bulk of these trials took place, which often resulted in burning at the stake for the conversos. The Inquisitions under Ferdinand and Isabella alone had several thousand conversos burned at the stake. The Inquisitions were abolished on July 15, 1834 by a Royal Decree signed by regent Maria Christina of the Two Sicilys. But it was temporarily reinstated during the First Carlist War, to protect the Church. The Church carried out these Inquisitions as much for taking the property from the conversos as for defending their faith. They were called trials, but they always ended up in execution for the Jews.
In the fifteenth century, Moors confiscated the lands of the Greek Catholic families and then they were transformed into fiefs (land held for feudal service). It left the Catholics at the mercy of the feudal lords, who were warriors of the Islamic Empire. This situation was one of increasing oppression for the Catholics, and their priesthood had been drastically altered. Catholic priests were now acting as civil representatives of their people in feudal matters, which they eventually discovered actually gave them an advantage. But because of this position, even more apostasies developed and took hold within the Catholic Church.
Many attempts had been made to question the false teachings of the Catholic church in Europe, but it all came to a head in the early sixteenth century. This one particular Catholic German Monk questioned why some of the things he was taught were done. The Church leaders just scoffed at him and told him that what was in the Canon Law was approved by the Church Fathers - and they were the final word on all church matters. It was not his place to question Canon Law and the church Fathers.
After being sent to Germany, where he had access to the New Testament, God had revealed something to the spirit of this Catholic German Monk named Martin Luther. Many of the traditions of his church just didn’t seem right to Martin Luther. And now that he had read the New Testament, he wondered about them even more.
After reading and studying the New Testament, Martin Luther finally came to a conclusion, and disagreed with the church leaders. So he sat down one night and wrote out all his complaints, that he based on the New Testament. Then he posted this very long list on the main church’s door in hopes that everyone would see it. Luther only wanted to bring reform to the church, but in reality Martin Luther was challenging the pope’s authority.
The Catholic’s idea of living for God was limited to his humanity and intellectualism. They had no concept of God’s Way and commandments, and couldn’t even conceive of being a follower of Jesus any other way than what they were told by the Catholic church leaders. They did not know that one must have a spiritual experience to know God. It wasn’t just a choice or a belief system, it was the rebirth of a dead spirit - an actual reconnection to God.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century was a movement that led to a breech, or rather war, between the Catholic church and the reformers. Because of the beliefs and practices of these reformers, these people eventually came to be known as Separatists, Puritans and Protestants. When the Roman Catholic church refused to heed Luther’s call to reform and return to biblical doctrines and practices, the Reformation began.
The Church had again split - there was the Catholic church (East and West) who clung to all the false teachings of the Catholic church Fathers. And then there were the Separatists and Puritans who later came to be called the Protestants for their protests of the Catholic church’s false doctrines.
From the Reformation four major divisions or traditions of Protestantism would eventually emerge: Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, and Anglican - making the Protestant church not much different than the Catholic church, with their many sects and false doctrines. (The Anabaptist’s later became the Amish we know today, but began as the Mennonites. Many of the Old Order of the Amish do not believe in Salvation. The Amish go back only about 300 years.)
Demanding the Truth had caused many more wars between the Catholics and the Protestants. Many people died for their beliefs, whether they be for the Catholic church or the Protestants. The Catholic church could not see that they were wrong in their false teachings, and the Protestants wouldn’t stop trying to show them the error of their ways. These constant squabbles, that many times turned into all out wars, showed that neither of them truly knew God’s Way. God’s true Way was still hidden from even the Protestants. It would be another five hundred years before some of the Protestants would even begin to see the real truth of the Bible.
In the seventeenth century, many of the Protestants of England, who called themselves Separatists because they separated themselves from the Church of England, left England and ventured over to the new land so they could practice their religion safely, for the wars between them and the Catholics were still going on. It seemed that whenever the Queen of England would change, so would the preferred religion of their country. So they went in search of a new country for freedom of religion.
The Puritans stayed in England a bit longer, thinking they could still reform the Church of England from within. They did this at great risk to their lives. If they were caught, they were branded and an ear was cut off, as a warning to others. And some were killed. But eventually, they too would find their way to the new land - forced to live in the colonies of a new land, because life had become too unbearable in England.
But Separatists and Puritans found that it was no different in this new place called Boston, because they weren’t free of England. And the founders of this land had their own ideas of what religion should really be, and they wanted a town where only one religion would be acceptable - their version and interpretation of Christianity. Anyone who had any differing idea to what the Protestant church leaders thought the New Testament meant, were imprisoned as heretics. This new land proved to be the same as the old.
This new country was supposedly founded on principles of freedom and of God, but these principles were rooted deep within the minds of the affluent - a government formed by man, not God. Hiding behind the supposed idea that this country was founded on Godly principles, the ultimate bluff was only beginning - the lie of the American Dream had just begun. After almost two hundred thirty-eight years, this new land has completely lost touch with God.
Yeshua warned us in the gospels, almost from the beginning, that false teachings have been invading the congregations and leading people astray. Most Protestants think they have left all false teachings behind, but they are blind to the real truth of this matter.
Today, there is what has become dubbed the Jewish Roots movement which I believe to be God’s first step in bringing us back into His Way. There are many movements within this movement, most of them entirely wrong. And because of all these different (and wrong) beliefs within this movement, they are being called cults. But I believe God will eventually work out all the kinks - He will maneuver us where He wants us to be and how He wants us to live.
After reading how Christianity came to be, I hope you will search out the facts for yourself. You will not be able to deny how we all came to believe in a bunch of lies. I urge you to stop believing the lies. Learn all you can about your Hebrew heritage and then embrace it. It will take time, but I know you can do it. I believe God will do a quick work in you!
Bringing both Hebrew and grafted-in Hebrews together into One Body of Messiah and into one Way of belief through the same knowledge of God
Torah Way of Life
The Authentic Voice of Hebrew Roots Knowledge
The Authentic Voice of Hebrew Roots Knowledge
The History of Christianity