This new brand of Christianity rapidly expanded its membership and became the visible Christian church. At the beginning of the fourth century two things happened that abruptly altered the course of Christian history. Firstly, the Roman emperor Diocletian intensified the policy of many previous Roman emperors persecuting Christians and ordering all Christian manuscripts be burned, dramatically renewing a climate of fear throughout the Christian community.
Ten years later when Constantine came to power, he still had many enemies, and his political position remained insecure. Within the empire only Christians were unaligned politically, and Constantine saw an opportunity to use this formerly persecuted and politically alienated religious body to strengthen his hold on the empire.
He first of all legalized Christianity and two years later called all the divided professing Christian groups together to hammer out a unified system of belief to create a religious body politically committed to him. To achieve this, Constantine presided over doctrinal deliberations and dictated statements of belief whenever disagreements could not be resolved amicably, eventually molding the bickering groups of counterfeit Christians who were willing to accept state control into a strong and unified vassal of the Roman Empire.
Williston Walker, former Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale University, states that in the year 323, “Constantine was at last the sole ruler of the Roman world. The church was everywhere free from persecution…But, in winning its freedom from its enemies, it had come largely under the control of the occupant of the Roman imperial throne. A fateful union with the state had begun.” (A History of the Christian Church, 1946, p. 111).
As this new religion—supported by the Roman emperors—grew in power and influence, it sought to become a truly universal church, with many members, new converts and practices being added. Charles Guignebert, Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Paris, described the process: “Now at the beginning of the fifth century, the ignorant and the semi-Christians thronged into the Church in numbers…They had forgotten none of their pagan customs… The bishops of that period had to content themselves with redressing, as best they could, and in experimental fashion, the shocking malformations of the Christian faith which they perceived around them.…
“[Properly instructing converts] was out of the question; they had to be content with teaching them no more than the symbol of baptism and then baptizing them en masse, postponing until a later date the task of eradicating their superstitions, which they preserved intact…This ‘later date’ never arrived, and the Church adapted to herself, as well as she could, them and their customs and beliefs. On their side, they were content to dress up their paganism in a Christian cloak” (The Early History of Christianity, 1927, pp. 208-210).
This state-dominated Christianity therefore became a bizarre synthesis of beliefs, practices and customs from many sources. The counterfeit Christianity the Apostles of Jesus Christ had fought so hard to contain grew in size and popularity. In later centuries this religion would repeatedly fragment into competing denominations. Tragically none would completely return to the original practices and teachings of Jesus Christ and the Apostles, a fact recognized by many modern biblical scholars.
Interestingly, the messages to the seven churches in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 accurately reflected conditions in the Church in the first century, as well as being prophetic. These chapters paint a comprehensive picture of trends that had already begun and would continue through the history of the Church, giving us several indications why the deep divisions among Christians developed and why this divisiveness continued to plague subsequent generations.
When these messages were written the Church was suffering trials, persecution and imprisonment. Christ encourages the congregations not to lose heart and quit, reminding them to look ahead to the Kingdom of God. Many members of these congregations had remained faithful in spite of hardships and trials, while others had lost their first love, becoming lukewarm and spiritually blind. False prophets were also infiltrating the congregations and doctrinal errors were developing, based on a wrong view of law and grace.
Here we find, from Christ’s own messages to His Church, that in the apostolic era many were unfaithful and ultimately departed from God’s truth. “They went out from us,” says John, “but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us…” (1 John 2:19). Two distinct religions developed from the apostolic era—one faithful to Christ, the other deceived by Satan. Those who through the centuries have faithfully continued to yield their lives to God in sincere obedience to His laws are still, comparatively speaking, are only a “little flock” (Luke 12:32) in a confused world.
