19. How Were God and Satan Merged into One Image?
At the bottom of the fall into Roman darkness, the desire of the serpent to have his own image become the image of "Christ," through Constantine was finally achieved. And now the image of Jesus as "God" is, in the minds of most, a high heavenly being emanating lights and perfections, that is an angel as what God looks like. Yet, in the minds of most, this high heavenly being looks, in fact, like Constantine the Great, or as his worship, Apollo, the god of the sun.Yet there was more to come, both inwardly and outwardly. Damasus I took upon himself the title of high priest of Roman paganism and thus brought into Christianity all the outward symbolism of demon worship, symbolism still purchased and honored by evangelical Christians today.
Far worse than that, however, the secretary of Damasus I, Jerome, in translating the Bible from Greek into Latin, cast into the field of Christianity the darkest tare seed ever sown, turning "age" into "eternal" and turning God into a demon monster in the minds of the church.
Thus Christians, in defining God, go back and forth between a God of love and a God of hate, unable to reconcile the two at a personal level, and thus completely unable to draw near to this "God" they have imaged.
Lesson 19.1 Purpose Rules briefly takes us back into the purpose of God for all things as the ground of our investigation of these awful things we are studying as well as our anchor in knowing what is the truth.
Lesson 19.2 Contribution of Damasus shows how Damasus brought the symbols of demon worship into Christianity and draped the Lord Jesus Christ and the Father with those diabolical symbols, and how Christians today continue that same practice.
Lesson 19.3 Contribution of Jerome discovers how non-Biblical Greek thinking had begun to work upon Christian thinking, thus paving the way for the darkness of Roman thinking, bringing the guilt of sin into a doctrine of the church - punishment forever without purpose, a concept entirely unknown in the first 200 years of Christ walking this earth.
Lesson 19.4 Serpent Seed Sown then shows how the tares of the evil one have been inserted into Christian theology, growing right alongside the truth, looking just like the truth.