Chapter 13
The Reformation—The Search Took a New Turn
“THE real tragedy of the medieval church is that it failed to move with the times. . . . Far from being progressive, far from giving a spiritual lead, it was retrograde and decadent, corrupt in all its members.” So says the book The Story of the Reformation about the powerful Roman Catholic Church, which had dominated most of Europe from the 5th century to the 15th century C.E.
How did the Church of Rome fall from its all-powerful position to become ‘decadent and corrupt’? How did the papacy, which claimed apostolic succession, fail even to provide “a spiritual lead”? And what was the outcome of this failure? To find the answers, we need to examine briefly just what kind of church it had become and what role it played in mankind’s search for the true God.
The Church at a Low Ebb
By the end of the 15th century, the Church of Rome, with parishes, monasteries, and convents throughout its domain, had become the largest landholder in all Europe. It was reported that it owned as much as half the land in France and Germany and two fifths or more in Sweden and England. The result? The “splendor of Rome grew immeasurably during the late 1400’s and early 1500’s, and its political importance prospered temporarily,” says the book A History of Civilization. All the grandeur, however, came at a price, and to maintain it, the papacy had to find new sources of revenue. Describing the various means employed, historian Will Durant wrote:
“Every ecclesiastical appointee was required to remit to the papal Curia—the administrative bureaus of the papacy—half the income of his office for the first year (“annates”), and thereafter annually a tenth or tithe. A new archbishop had to pay to the pope a substantial sum for the pallium—a band of white wool that served as the confirmation and insignia of his authority. On the death of any cardinal, archbishop, bishop, or abbot, his personal possessions reverted to the papacy. . . . Every judgment or favor obtained from the Curia expected a gift in acknowledgment, and the judgment was sometimes dictated by the gift.”
The large sums of money that flowed into the papal coffers year after year eventually led to much abuse and corruption. It has been said that ‘even a pope cannot touch pitch without soiling his fingers,’ and church history of this period saw what one historian called “a succession of very worldly popes.” These included Sixtus IV (pope, 1471-84), who spent large sums to build the Sistine Chapel, named after himself, and to enrich his many nephews and nieces; Alexander VI (pope, 1492-1503), the notorious Rodrigo Borgia, who openly acknowledged and promoted his illegitimate children; and Julius II (pope, 1503-13), a nephew of Sixtus IV, who was more devoted to wars, politics, and art than to his ecclesiastical duties. It was with full justification that the Dutch Catholic scholar Erasmus wrote in 1518: “The shamelessness of the Roman Curia has reached its climax.”
Corruption and immorality were not limited to the papacy. A common saying of the time was: “If you want to ruin your son, make him a priest.” This is backed up by records of that time. According to Durant, in England, among “accusations of [sexual] incontinence filed in 1499, . . . clerical offenders numbered some 23 per cent of the total, though the clergy were probably less than 2 per cent of the population. Some confessors solicited sexual favors from female penitents. Thousands of priests had concubines; in Germany nearly all.” (Contrast 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Ephesians 5:5.) Moral lapses also reached into other areas. A Spaniard of the time is said to have complained: “I see that we can scarcely get anything from Christ’s ministers but for money; at baptism money . . . at marriage money, for confession money—no, not extreme unction [last rites] without money! They will ring no bells without money, no burial in the church without money; so that it seemeth that Paradise is shut up from them that have no money.”—Contrast 1 Timothy 6:10.
To summarize the state of the Roman Church at the beginning of the 16th century, we quote the words of Machiavelli, a famous Italian philosopher of that period:
“Had the religion of Christianity been preserved according to the ordinances of the Founder, the state and commonwealth of Christendom would have been far more united and happy than they are. Nor can there be a greater proof of its decadence than the fact that the nearer people are to the Roman Church, the head of their religion, the less religious are they.”
Early Efforts at Reform
The crisis in the church was noted not only by men like Erasmus and Machiavelli but also by the church itself. Church councils were convened to address some of the complaints and abuses, but with no lasting results. The popes, basking in personal power and glory, discouraged any real efforts at reform.
Had the church been more serious at housecleaning, there would possibly have been no Reformation. But, as it was, cries for reform began to be heard from inside and outside the church. In Chapter 11 we have already mentioned the Waldenses and the Albigenses. Though they were condemned as heretics and ruthlessly crushed, they had awakened in the people a dissatisfaction with the abuses of the Catholic clergy and had kindled a desire to return to the Bible. Such sentiments found their expression in a number of early Reformers.
Protests From Within the Church
Often referred to as “the morning star of the Reformation,” John Wycliffe (1330?-84) was a Catholic priest and a professor of theology at Oxford, England. Well aware of the abuses in the church, he wrote and preached against such matters as corruption in the monastic orders, papal taxation, the doctrine of transubstantiation (the claim that the bread and wine used in the Mass literally change into the body and blood of Jesus Christ), the confession, and church involvement in temporal affairs.
Wycliffe was particularly outspoken when it came to the church’s neglect in teaching the Bible. Once he declared: “Would to God that every parish church in this land had a good Bible and good expositions on the gospel, and that the priests studied them well, and taught truly the gospel and God’s commands to the people!” To this end, Wycliffe, in the last years of his life, undertook the task of translating the Latin Vulgate Bible into English. With the help of his associates, particularly Nicholas of Hereford, he produced the first complete Bible in the English language. It was undoubtedly Wycliffe’s greatest contribution to mankind’s search for God.
Wycliffe’s writings and portions of the Bible were distributed throughout England by a body of preachers often referred to as “Poor Priests” because they went about in simple clothing, barefoot, and without material possessions. They were also derisively called Lollards, from the Middle Dutch word Lollaerd, or “one who mumbles prayers or hymns.” (Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable) “In a few years, their numbers were very considerable,” says the book The Lollards. “It was calculated that at least one fourth of the nation were really or nominally inclined to these sentiments.” All of this, of course, did not go unnoticed by the church. Because of his prominence among the ruling and scholarly classes, Wycliffe was allowed to die in peace on the last day of 1384. His followers were less fortunate. During the reign of Henry IV of England, they were branded as heretics, and many of them were imprisoned, tortured, or burned to death.
Strongly influenced by John Wycliffe was the Bohemian (Czech) Jan Hus (1369?-1415), also a Catholic priest and rector of the University of Prague. Like Wycliffe, Hus preached against the corruption of the Roman Church and stressed the importance of reading the Bible. This quickly brought the wrath of the hierarchy upon him. In 1403 the authorities ordered him to stop preaching the antipapal ideas of Wycliffe, whose books they also publicly burned. Hus, however, went on to write some of the most stinging indictments against the practices of the church, including the sale of indulgences. He was condemned and excommunicated in 1410.
Hus was uncompromising in his support for the Bible. “To rebel against an erring pope is to obey Christ,” he wrote. He also taught that the true church, far from being the pope and the Roman establishment, “is the number of all the elect and the mystical body of Christ, whose head Christ is; and the bride of Christ, whom of his great love he redeemed with his own blood.” (Compare Ephesians 1:22, 23; 5:25-27.) For all of this, he was tried at the Council of Constance and was condemned as a heretic. Declaring that “it is better to die well than to live ill,” he refused to recant and was burned to death at the stake in 1415. The same council also ordered that the bones of Wycliffe be dug up and burned even though he had been dead and buried for over 30 years!
Another early Reformer was the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98) of the San Marcos monastery in Florence, Italy. Swept along by the spirit of the Italian Renaissance, Savonarola spoke out against the corruption in both Church and State. Claiming as a basis Scripture, as well as visions and revelations that he said he had received, he sought to establish a Christian state, or theocratic order. In 1497 the pope excommunicated him. The following year, he was arrested, tortured, and hanged. His last words were: “My Lord died for my sins; shall not I gladly give this poor life for him?” His body was burned and the ashes thrown into the river Arno. Fittingly, Savonarola called himself “a forerunner and a sacrifice.” Just a few years later, the Reformation burst forth in full force all over Europe.
A House Divided
When the storm of the Reformation finally broke, it shattered the religious house of Christendom in Western Europe. Having been under the almost total domination of the Roman Catholic Church, it now became a house divided. Southern Europe—Italy, Spain, Austria, and parts of France—remained mostly Catholic. The rest fell into three main divisions: Lutheran in Germany and Scandinavia; Calvinist (or Reformed) in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scotland, and parts of France; and Anglican in England. Scattered among these were smaller but more radical groups, first the Anabaptists and later the Mennonites, Hutterites, and Puritans, who in time took their beliefs to North America.
Through the years, these main divisions further fragmented into the hundreds of denominations of today—Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, to name just a few. Christendom truly became a house divided. How did these divisions come about?
Luther and His Theses
If a decisive starting point of the Protestant Reformation has to be given, it would be October 31, 1517, when the Augustinian monk Martin Luther (1483-1546) nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church at Wittenberg in the German state of Saxony. However, what provoked this dramatic event? Who was Martin Luther? And against what did he protest?
Like Wycliffe and Hus before him, Martin Luther was a monk-scholar. He was also a doctor of theology and a professor of Biblical studies at the University of Wittenberg. Luther made quite a name for himself for his insight into the Bible. Though he had strong opinions on the subject of salvation, or justification, by faith rather than by works or by penance, he had no thought of breaking with the Church of Rome. In fact, the issuing of his theses was his reaction to a specific incident and was not a planned revolt. He was protesting the sale of indulgences.
In Luther’s time, papal indulgences were publicly sold not only for the living but also for the dead. “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from Purgatory springs” was a common saying. To ordinary folk, an indulgence became almost an insurance policy against punishment for any sin, and repentance fell by the wayside. “Everywhere,” wrote Erasmus, “the remission of purgatorial torment is sold; nor is it sold only, but forced upon those who refuse it.”
In 1517 John Tetzel, a Dominican friar, went to Jüterbog, near Wittenberg, to sell indulgences. The money thus obtained was partly to finance the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. It was also to help Albert of Hohenzollern repay the money he had borrowed to pay the Roman Curia for the post of archbishop of Mainz. Tetzel mustered all his skills of salesmanship, and the people flocked to him. Luther was indignant, and he made use of the quickest means available to express publicly his opinion of the whole circuslike affair—by nailing 95 points of debate on the church door.
Luther called his 95 theses Disputation for Clarification of the Power of Indulgences. His purpose was not so much to challenge the authority of the church as to point out the excesses and abuses regarding the sale of papal indulgences. This can be seen from the following theses:
“5. The pope has neither the will nor the power to remit any penalties, except those which he has imposed by his own authority. . . .
20. Therefore the pope, when he speaks of the plenary remission of all penalties, does not mean really of all, but only of those imposed by himself. . . .
36. Every Christian who feels true compunction has of right plenary remission of punishment and guilt even without letters of pardon.”
Aided by the recently invented printing press, these explosive ideas did not take long to reach other parts of Germany—and Rome. What started out as an academic debate on the sale of indulgences soon became a controversy over matters of faith and papal authority. At first, the Church of Rome engaged Luther in debate and ordered him to recant. When Luther refused, both the ecclesiastical and the political powers were brought to bear upon him. In 1520 the pope issued a bull, or edict, that forbade Luther to preach and ordered that his books be burned. In defiance Luther burned the papal bull in public. The pope excommunicated him in 1521.
Later that year, Luther was summoned to the diet, or assembly, at Worms. He was tried by the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V, a staunch Catholic, as well as by the six electors of the German states, and other leaders and dignitaries, religious and secular. When pressed once again to recant, Luther made his famous statement: “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason . . . , I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.” Consequently, he was declared an outlaw by the emperor. However, the ruler of his own German state, Elector Frederick of Saxony, came to his aid and offered him shelter in Wartburg castle.
These measures, however, failed to curb the spread of Luther’s ideas. For ten months, in the security of Wartburg, Luther devoted himself to writing and to Bible translation. He translated the Greek Scriptures into German from Erasmus’ Greek text. The Hebrew Scriptures followed later. Luther’s Bible turned out to be just what the common people needed. It was reported that “five thousand copies were sold in two months, two hundred thousand in twelve years.” Its influence on the German language and culture is often compared to that of the King James Version on the English.
In the years following the Diet of Worms, the Reformation movement gained so much popular support that in 1526 the emperor granted each German state the right to choose its own form of religion, Lutheran or Roman Catholic. However, in 1529, when the emperor reversed the decision, some of the German princes protested; hence the name Protestant was coined for the Reformation movement. The next year, 1530, at the Diet of Augsburg, an effort was made by the emperor to mend the differences between the two parties. The Lutherans presented their beliefs in a document, the Augsburg Confession, composed by Philipp Melanchthon but based on Luther’s teachings. Although the document was most conciliatory in tone, the Roman Church rejected it, and the rift between Protestantism and Catholicism became irreconcilable. Many German states sided with Luther, and the Scandinavian states soon followed suit.
Reform or Revolt?
What were the fundamental points that divided the Protestants from the Roman Catholics? According to Luther, there were three. First, Luther believed that salvation results from “justification by faith alone” (Latin, sola fide) and not from priestly absolution or works of penance. Second, he taught that forgiveness is granted solely because of God’s grace (sola gratia) and not by the authority of priests or popes. Finally, Luther contended that all doctrinal matters are to be confirmed by Scripture only (sola scriptura) and not by popes or church councils.
In spite of this, Luther, says The Catholic Encyclopedia, “retained as much of the ancient beliefs and liturgy as could be made to fit into his peculiar views on sin and justification.” The Augsburg Confession states regarding the Lutheran faith that “there is nothing that is discrepant with the Scriptures, or with the Church Catholic, or even with the Roman Church, so far as that Church is known from writers.” In fact, the Lutheran faith, as outlined in the Augsburg Confession, included such unscriptural doctrines as the Trinity, immortal soul, and eternal torment, as well as such practices as infant baptism and church holidays and feasts. On the other hand, the Lutherans demanded certain changes, such as that the people be allowed to receive both wine and bread at Communion and that celibacy, monastic vows, and compulsory confession be abolished.
As a whole, the Reformation, as advocated by Luther and his followers, succeeded in breaking from the papal yoke. Yet, as Jesus stated at John 4:24, “God is a Spirit, and those worshiping him must worship with spirit and truth.” It can be said that with Martin Luther, mankind’s search for the true God only took a new turn; the narrow path of truth was still far off.—Matthew 7:13, 14; John 8:31, 32.
Zwingli’s Reform in Switzerland
While Luther was busy battling the papal emissaries and civil authorities in Germany, Catholic priest Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) started his reform movement in Zurich, Switzerland. That area being German-speaking, the people were already affected by the tide of reform from the north. Around 1519, Zwingli began to preach against indulgences, Mariolatry, clerical celibacy, and other doctrines of the Catholic Church. Though Zwingli claimed independence from Luther, he agreed with Luther in many areas and distributed Luther’s tracts throughout the country. In contrast with the more conservative Luther, however, Zwingli advocated the removal of all vestiges of the Roman Church—images, crucifixes, clerical garb, even liturgical music.
A more serious controversy between the two Reformers, however, was on the issue of the Eucharist, or Mass (Communion). Luther, insisting on a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words, ‘This is my body,’ believed that the body and blood of Christ were miraculously present in the bread and wine served at Communion. Zwingli, on the other hand, argued, in his treatise On the Lord’s Supper, that Jesus’ statement “must be taken figuratively or metaphorically; ‘This is my body,’ means, ‘The bread signifies my body,’ or ‘is a figure of my body.’” Because of this difference, the two Reformers parted ways.
Zwingli continued to preach his reform doctrines in Zurich and effected many changes there. Other cities soon followed his lead, but most people in the rural areas, being more conservative, clung to Catholicism. The conflict between the two factions became so great that civil war broke out between Swiss Protestants and Roman Catholics. Zwingli, serving as an army chaplain, was killed in the battle of Kappel, near the Lake of Zug, in 1531. When peace finally came, each district was given the right to decide its own form of religion, Protestant or Catholic.
Anabaptists, Mennonites, and Hutterites
Some Protestants, however, felt that the Reformers did not go far enough in renouncing the shortcomings of the Catholic papist church. They believed that the Christian church should consist only of the practicing faithful who become baptized, rather than of all the people in a community or nation. Therefore, they rejected infant baptism and insisted on separation of Church and State. They secretly rebaptized their fellow believers and thus acquired the name Anabaptists (ana meaning “again” in Greek). Since they refused to bear arms, take oaths, or accept public office, they were viewed as a threat to society and were persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike.
At first the Anabaptists lived in small groups scattered through parts of Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. As they preached what they believed everywhere they went, their numbers grew rapidly. A band of Anabaptists, swept along by their religious fervor, abandoned their pacifism and captured the city of Münster in 1534 and attempted to set it up as a communal, polygamous New Jerusalem. The movement was quickly put down with great violence. It gave Anabaptists a bad name, and they were practically stamped out. In reality, most Anabaptists were simple religious folk trying to live a separate and quiet life. Among the better organized descendants of the Anabaptists were the Mennonites, followers of the Dutch Reformer Menno Simons, and the Hutterites, under the Tyrolean Jacob Hutter. To escape persecution, some of them migrated to Eastern Europe—Poland, Hungary, even Russia—others to North America, where they eventually emerged as Hutterite and Amish communities.
Emergence of Calvinism
The reform work in Switzerland moved ahead under the leadership of a Frenchman named Jean Cauvin, or John Calvin (1509-64), who came in contact with Protestant teachings during his student days in France. In 1534 Calvin left Paris because of religious persecution and settled in Basel, Switzerland. In defense of the Protestants, he published Institutes of the Christian Religion, in which he summarized the ideas of the early church fathers and medieval theologians, as well as those of Luther and Zwingli. The work came to be regarded as the doctrinal foundation for all the Reformed churches established later in Europe and America.
In Institutes, he set forth his theology. To Calvin, God is the absolute sovereign, whose will determines and rules over everything. In contrast, fallen man is sinful and totally undeserving. Salvation, therefore, is not dependent on man’s good works but on God—hence, Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, on which he wrote:
“We assert, that by an eternal and immutable counsel, God has once for all determined, both whom He would admit to salvation, and whom He would condemn to destruction. We affirm that this counsel, as far as concerns the elect, is founded on His gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of human merit; but that to those whom He devotes to condemnation, the gate of life is closed by a just and irreprehensible, but incomprehensible, judgment.”
The austerity of such a teaching is also reflected in other areas. Calvin insisted that Christians must live holy and virtuous lives, abstaining not only from sin but also from pleasure and frivolity. Further, he argued that the church, which is made up of the elect, must be freed of all civil restrictions and that only through the church can a truly godly society be established.
Shortly after publishing Institutes, Calvin was persuaded by William Farel, another Reformer from France, to settle in Geneva. Together they worked to put Calvinism into practice. Their aim was to turn Geneva into a city of God, a theocracy of God-rule combining the functions of Church and State. They instituted strict regulations, with sanctions, covering everything from religious instruction and church services to public morals and even such matters as sanitation and fire prevention. A history text reports that “a hair-dresser, for example, for arranging a bride’s hair in what was deemed an unseemly manner, was imprisoned for two days; and the mother, with two female friends, who had aided in the process, suffered the same penalty. Dancing and card-playing were also punished by the magistrate.” Harsh treatment was meted out to those who differed from Calvin on theology, the most notorious case being the burning of Spaniard Miguel Serveto, or Michael Servetus .
Calvin continued to apply his brand of reform in Geneva until his death in 1564, and the Reformed church became firmly established. Protestant reformers, fleeing persecution in other lands, flocked to Geneva, took in Calvinist ideas, and became instrumental in starting reform movements in their respective homelands. Calvinism soon spread to France, where the Huguenots (as the French Calvinist Protestants were called) suffered severe persecution at the hands of the Catholics. In the Netherlands, Calvinists helped establish the Dutch Reformed Church. In Scotland, under the zealous leadership of the former Catholic priest John Knox, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland was established along Calvinist lines. Calvinism also played a role in the Reformation in England, and from there it went with the Puritans to North America. In this sense, although Luther set the Protestant Reformation in motion, Calvin had by far the greater influence in its development.
Reformation in England
Quite apart from the reform movements in Germany and Switzerland, the English Reformation can trace its roots back to the days of John Wycliffe, whose anticlerical preaching and emphasis on the Bible engendered the Protestant spirit in England. His effort in translating the Bible into English was followed by others. William Tyndale, who had to flee from England, produced his New Testament in 1526. He was later betrayed in Antwerp and strangled at the stake, and his body was burned. Miles Coverdale completed Tyndale’s work of translation, and the entire Bible appeared in 1535. The publication of the Bible in the language of the people was no doubt the single most powerful factor that contributed to the Reformation in England.
The formal break from Roman Catholicism took place when Henry VIII (1491-1547), named Defender of the Faith by the pope, declared the Act of Supremacy in 1534, setting himself up as the head of the Church of England. Henry also closed the monasteries and divided their property among the gentry. In addition, he ordered that a copy of the Bible in English be placed in every church. However, Henry’s action was more political than religious. What he wanted was independence from papal authority, especially over his marital affairs. Religiously he remained Catholic in every way but name.
It was during the long reign (1558-1603) of Elizabeth I that the Church of England became Protestant in practice though remaining largely Catholic in structure. It abolished allegiance to the pope, clerical celibacy, confession, and other Catholic practices, yet it retained an episcopal form of church structure in its hierarchy of archbishops and bishops as well as orders of monks and nuns. This conservatism caused considerable dissatisfaction, and various dissenting groups appeared. The Puritans demanded a more thorough reform to purify the church of all Roman Catholic practices; the Separatists and Independents insisted that church affairs should be run by local elders (presbyters). Many of the dissidents fled to the Netherlands or to North America, where they further developed their Congregational and Baptist churches. There also sprung up in England the Society of Friends (Quakers) under George Fox (1624-91) and the Methodists under John Wesley (1703-91).
What Were the Effects?
Having considered the three major streams of the Reformation—Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican—we must stop to assess what the Reformation accomplished. Undeniably, it changed the course of history of the Western world. “The effect of the Reformation was to elevate the people to a thirst for liberty and a higher and purer citizenship. Wherever the Protestant cause extended, it made the masses more self-asserting,” wrote John F. Hurst in his book Short History of the Reformation. Many scholars believe that Western civilization as we know it today would have been impossible without the Reformation. Be that as it may, we must ask: What did the Reformation accomplish religiously? What did it do in behalf of mankind’s search for the true God?
The highest good the Reformation achieved, no doubt, was that it made the Bible available to the common people in their own language. For the first time, people had before them the whole of God’s Word to read, so that they could be nourished spiritually. But, of course, more is needed than just reading the Bible. Did the Reformation bring people freedom not only from papal authority but also from the erroneous doctrines and dogmas that they had been subjected to for centuries?—John 8:32.
Nearly all the Protestant churches subscribe to the same creeds—the Nicene, Athanasian, and Apostles’ creeds—and these profess some of the very doctrines that Catholicism has been teaching for centuries, such as the Trinity, immortal soul, and hellfire. Such unscriptural teachings gave the people a distorted picture of God and his purpose. Rather than aid them in their search for the true God, the numerous sects and denominations that came into existence as a result of the free spirit of the Protestant Reformation have only steered people in many diverse directions. In fact, the diversity and confusion have caused many to question the very existence of God. The result? In the 19th century there came a rising tide of atheism and agnosticism. That will be the subject of our next chapter.
[Footnotes]
Letters of pardon issued by the pope for sins.
Luther was so insistent on the concept of “justification by faith alone” that in his translation of the Bible, he added the word “alone” to Romans 3:28. He was also suspicious of the book of James for its statement that “faith without works is dead.” (James 2:17, 26) He failed to recognize that in Romans, Paul was speaking of works of the Jewish Law.—Romans 3:19, 20, 28.
Martin Luther was married in 1525 to Katharina von Bora, a former nun who had escaped from a Cistercian cloister. They had six children. He stated that he married for three reasons: to please his father, to spite the pope and the Devil, and to seal his witness before martyrdom.
Henry VIII had six wives. In opposition to the pope’s wishes, his first marriage was annulled, and another ended in divorce. He had two wives beheaded, and two died natural deaths.
The Greek word e•pi′sko•pos is translated “bishop” in English Bibles such as the King James Version.

“Errors of the Trinity”
At age 20, Michael Servetus (1511-53), a Spaniard trained in law and medicine, published De Trinitatis erroribus (Errors of the Trinity), in which he stated that he “will not make use of the word Trinity, which is not to be found in Scripture, and only seems to perpetuate philosophical error.” He denounced the Trinity as a doctrine “that cannot be understood, that is impossible in the nature of things, and that may even be looked on as blasphemous!”
For his outspokenness, Servetus was condemned by the Catholic Church. But it was the Calvinists who had him arrested, tried, and executed by slow burning. Calvin justified his actions in these words: “When the papists are so harsh and violent in defense of their superstitions that they rage cruelly to shed innocent blood, are not Christian magistrates shamed to show themselves less ardent in defense of the sure truth?” Calvin’s religious fanaticism and personal hatred blinded his judgment and smothered Christian principles.—Compare Matthew 5:44.

Simplified Outline of Christendom’s Major Religions
Start of Apostasy - 2nd Century
Roman Catholic Church
4th Century (Constantine)
5th Century Coptic
Jacobite
1054 C.E. Eastern Orthodox
Russian
Greek
Romanian and others
16th Century Reformation
Lutheran
German
Swedish
American and others
Anglican
Episcopal
Methodist
Salvation Army
Baptist
Pentecostal
Congregational
Calvinism
Presbyterian
Reformed Churches

Chapter 12
Islām—The Way to God by Submission
[Artwork—Arabic characters]
“IN THE name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.” This sentence translates the Arabic text, above, from the Qur’ān. It continues: “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds: The Beneficent, the Merciful: Owner of the Day of Judgement. Thee (alone) we worship; Thee (alone) we ask for help. Show us the straight path: The path of those whom Thou hast favoured; Not (the path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.”—The Qur’ān, surah 1:1-7, MMP.
These words form Al-Fātiḥah (“The Opening”), the first chapter, or surah, of the Muslim holy book, the Holy Qur’ān, or Koran. Since more than 1 in 6 of the world’s population is Muslim and devout Muslims repeat these verses more than once in each of their five daily prayers, these must be among the most recited words on earth.
According to one source, there are over 900 million Muslims in the world, making Islām second only to the Roman Catholic Church in numbers. It is perhaps the fastest growing major religion in the world, with an expanding Muslim movement in Africa and the Western world.
The name Islām is significant to a Muslim, for it means “submission,” “surrender,” or “commitment” to Allāh, and according to one historian, “it expresses the innermost attitude of those who have hearkened to the preaching of Mohammed.” “Muslim” means ‘one who makes or does Islām.’
Muslims believe that their faith is the culmination of the revelations given to the faithful Hebrews and Christians of old. However, their teachings diverge from the Bible on some points, even though they cite both the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures in the Qur’ān. To understand the Muslim faith better, we need to know how, where, and when this religion started.
Muḥammad’s Calling
Muḥammad was born in Mecca (Arabic, Makkah), Saudi Arabia, about 570 C.E. His father, ‛Abd Allāh, died before Muḥammad’s birth. His mother, Āminah, died when he was about six years old. At that time the Arabs practiced a form of worship of Allāh that was centered in the Mecca valley, at the sacred site of the Ka‛bah, a simple cubelike building where a black meteorite was revered. According to Islāmic tradition, “the Ka‛bah was originally built by Adam according to a celestial prototype and after the Deluge rebuilt by Abraham and Ishmael.” (History of the Arabs, by Philip K. Hitti) It became a sanctuary for 360 idols, one for each day of the lunar year.
As Muḥammad grew up, he questioned the religious practices of his day. John Noss, in his book Man’s Religions, states: “[Muḥammad] was disturbed by incessant quarreling in the avowed interests of religion and honor among the Quraysh chiefs [Muḥammad belonged to that tribe]. Stronger still was his dissatisfaction with the primitive survivals in Arabian religion, the idolatrous polytheism and animism, the immorality at religious convocations and fairs, the drinking, gambling, and dancing that were fashionable, and the burial alive of unwanted infant daughters practiced not only in Mecca but throughout Arabia.”—Surah 6:137.
Muḥammad’s call to be a prophet took place when he was about 40 years of age. He had the custom of going alone to a nearby mountain cave, called Ghār Ḥirā’, for meditation, and he claimed that it was on one of these occasions that he received the call to be a prophet. Muslim tradition relates that while he was there, an angel, later identified as Gabriel, commanded him to recite in the name of Allāh. Muḥammad failed to respond, so the angel ‘caught him forcefully and pressed him so hard that he could not bear it anymore.’ Then the angel repeated the command. Again, Muḥammad failed to react, so the angel ‘choked him’ again. This occurred three times before Muḥammad started to recite what came to be viewed as the first of a series of revelations that constitute the Qur’ān. Another tradition relates that divine inspiration was revealed to Muḥammad like the ringing of a bell.—The Book of Revelation from Ṣaḥīḥ Al-Bukhārī.
Revelation of the Qur’ān
What is said to have been the first revelation received by Muḥammad? Islāmic authorities generally agree that it was the first five verses of surah 96, entitled Al-‘Alaq, “The Clot [of Blood],” which reads:
“In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
Read: In the name of thy Lord who created.
Created man from a clot.
Read: And thy Lord is the Most Bounteous,
Who taught by the pen,
Taught man that which he knew not.”—MMP.
According to the Arabic source The Book of Revelation, Muḥammad answered, “I do not know how to read.” Therefore, he had to memorize the revelations so that he could repeat and recite them. The Arabs were skilled in the use of memory, and Muḥammad was no exception. How long did it take for him to receive the complete message of the Qur’ān? It is generally believed that the revelations came during a period of some 20 to 23 years, from about 610 C.E. to his death in 632 C.E.
Muslim sources explain that upon receiving each revelation, Muḥammad immediately recited it to those who happened to be near. These in turn committed the revelation to memory and by recitation kept it alive. Since the manufacture of paper was unknown to the Arabs, Muḥammad had the revelations written down by scribes on the primitive materials then available, such as shoulder blades of camels, palm leaves, wood, and parchment. However, it was not until after the prophet’s death that the Qur’ān took its present form, under the guidance of Muḥammad’s successors and companions. This was during the rule of the first three caliphs, or Muslim leaders.
Translator Muhammad Pickthall writes: “All the surahs of the Qur’an had been recorded in writing before the Prophet’s death, and many Muslims had committed the whole Qur’an to memory. But the written surahs were dispersed among the people; and when, in a battle . . . a large number of those who knew the whole Qur’an by heart were killed, a collection of the whole Qur’an was made and put in writing.”
Islāmic life is governed by three authorities—the Qur’ān, the Ḥadīth, and the Sharī‛ah. Muslims believe that the Qur’ān in Arabic is the purest form of the revelation, since, they say, it was the language used by God in speaking through Gabriel. Surah 43:3 states: “We have made it a Qur-ān in Arabic, that ye may be able to understand (and learn wisdom).” (AYA) Thus, any translation is viewed as only a dilution that involves a loss of purity. In fact, some Islāmic scholars refuse to translate the Qur’ān. Their viewpoint is that “to translate is always to betray,” and therefore, “Muslims have always deprecated and at times prohibited any attempt to render it in another language,” states Dr. J. A. Williams, lecturer on Islāmic history.
Islāmic Expansion
Muḥammad founded his new faith against great odds. The people of Mecca, even of his own tribe, rejected him. After 13 years of persecution and hatred, he moved his center of activity north to Yathrib, which then became known as al-Madīnah (Medina), the city of the prophet. This emigration, or the hijrah, in 622 C.E. marked a significant point in Islāmic history, and the date was later adopted as the starting point for the Islāmic calendar.
Eventually, Muḥammad achieved dominance when Mecca surrendered to him in January of 630 C.E. (8 A.H.) and he became its ruler. With the reins of secular and religious control in his hands, he was able to clean out the idolatrous images from the Ka‛bah and establish it as the focal point for pilgrimages to Mecca that continue down to this day .
Within a few decades of Muḥammad’s death in 632 C.E., Islām had spread as far as Afghanistan and even to Tunisia in North Africa. By the early eighth century, the faith of the Qur’ān had penetrated into Spain and was at the French border. As Professor Ninian Smart stated in his book Background to the Long Search: “Looked at from a human point of view, the achievement of an Arabian prophet living in the sixth and seventh centuries after Christ is staggering. Humanly, it was from him that a new civilisation flowed. But of course for the Muslim the work was divine and the achievement that of Allah.”
Muḥammad’s Death Leads to Division
The prophet’s death provoked a crisis. He died without any male progeny and without a clearly designated successor. As Philip Hitti states: “The caliphate [office of caliph] is therefore the oldest problem Islam had to face. It is still a living issue. . . . In the words of Muslim historian al-Shahrastāni [1086-1153]: ‘Never was there an Islamic issue which brought about more bloodshed than the caliphate (imāmah).’” How was the problem solved back there in 632 C.E.? “Abu-Bakr . . . was designated (June 8, 632) Muḥammad’s successor by some form of election in which those leaders present at the capital, al-Madīnah, took part.”—History of the Arabs.
The successor to the prophet would be a ruler, a khalīfah, or caliph. However, the question of the true successors to Muḥammad became a cause for divisions in the ranks of Islām. The Sunnī Muslims accept the principle of elective office rather than blood descent from the prophet. Therefore they believe that the first three caliphs, Abū Bakr (Muḥammad’s father-in-law), ‛Umar (the prophet’s adviser), and ‛Uthmān (the prophet’s son-in-law), were the legitimate successors to Muḥammad.
That claim is contested by the Shī‛ite Muslims, who say that the true leadership comes through the prophet’s blood line and through his cousin and son-in-law, ‛Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, the first imām (leader and successor), who married Muḥammad’s favorite daughter, Fāṭimah. Their marriage produced Muḥammad’s grandsons Ḥasan and Ḥusayn. The Shī‛ites also claim “that from the beginning Allah and His Prophet had clearly designated ‛Ali as the only legitimate successor but that the first three caliphs had cheated him out of his rightful office.” (History of the Arabs) Of course, the Sunnī Muslims view that differently.
What happened to ‛Alī? During his rule as the fourth caliph (656-661 C.E.), a struggle over leadership arose between him and the governor of Syria, Mu‛āwiyah. They joined battle, and then to spare further Muslim bloodshed, they threw their dispute open to arbitration. ‛Alī’s acceptance of arbitration weakened his case and alienated many of his followers, including the Khawārij (Seceders), who became his deadly foes. In the year 661 C.E., ‛Alī was murdered with a poisoned sabre by a Khārijī zealot. The two groups (the Sunnī and the Shī‛ah) were at loggerheads. The Sunnī branch of Islām then chose a leader from the Umayyads, wealthy Meccan chiefs, who were outside of the prophet’s family.
For the Shī‛ah, ‛Alī’s firstborn, Ḥasan, the prophet’s grandson, was the true successor. However, he resigned and was murdered. His brother Ḥusayn became the new imām, but he too was killed, by Umayyad troops on October 10, 680 C.E. His death or martyrdom, as the Shī‛ah view it, has had a significant effect on the Shī‛at ‛Alī, the party of ‛Alī, down to this day. They believe that ‛Alī was the true successor to Muḥammad and the first “imām [leader] divinely protected against error and sin.” ‛Alī and his successors were considered by the Shī‛ah to be infallible teachers with “the divine gift of impeccability.” The largest segment of the Shī‛ah believe that there have been only 12 true imāms, and the last of these, Muḥammad al-Muntaẓar, disappeared (878 C.E.) “in the cave of the great mosque at Sāmarra without leaving offspring.” Thus “he became ‘the hidden (mustatir)’ or ‘the expected (muntaẓar) imām.’ . . . In due time he will appear as the Mahdi (divinely guided one) to restore true Islam, conquer the whole world and usher in a short millennium before the end of all things.”—History of the Arabs.
Every year, the Shī‛ah commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Ḥusayn. They have processions in which some cut themselves with knives and swords and otherwise inflict suffering on themselves. In more modern times, Shī‛ite Muslims have received much publicity because of their zeal for Islāmic causes. However, they represent only about 20 percent of the world’s Muslims, the majority being Sunnī Muslims. But now, let us turn to some of the teachings of Islām and note how the Islāmic faith affects the daily conduct of Muslims.
God Is Supreme, Not Jesus
The three major monotheistic religions of the world are Judaism, Christianity, and Islām. But by the time Muḥammad appeared toward the beginning of the seventh century C.E., the first two religions, as far as he was concerned, had wandered from the path of truth. In fact, according to some Islāmic commentators, the Qur’ān implies rejection of Jews and of Christians in stating: “Not (the path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.” (Surah 1:7, MMP) Why is that?
A Qur’ānic commentary states: “The People of the Book went wrong: The Jews in breaking their Covenant, and slandering Mary and Jesus . . . and the Christians in raising Jesus the Apostle to equality with God” by means of the Trinity doctrine.—Surah 4:153-176, AYA.
The principal teaching of Islām, for utter simplicity, is what is known as the shahādah, or confession of faith, which every Muslim knows by heart: “La ilāh illa Allāh; Muḥammad rasūl Allāh” (No god but Allah; Muḥammad is the messenger of Allah). This agrees with the Qur’ānic expression, “Your God is One God; there is no God save Him, the Beneficent, the Merciful.” (Surah 2:163, MMP) This thought was stated 2,000 years earlier with the ancient call to Israel: “Listen, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah.” (Deuteronomy 6:4) Jesus repeated this foremost command, which is recorded at Mark 12:29, about 600 years before Muḥammad, and nowhere did Jesus claim to be God or to be equal to Him.—Mark 13:32; John 14:28; 1 Corinthians 15:28.
Regarding God’s uniqueness, the Qur’ān states: “So believe in God and His apostles. Say not ‘Trinity’: desist: it will be better for you: for God is One God.” (Surah 4:171, AYA) However, we should note that true Christianity does not teach a Trinity. That is a doctrine of pagan origin introduced by apostates of Christendom after the death of Christ and the apostles.—See Chapter 11.
Soul, Resurrection, Paradise, and Hellfire
Islām teaches that man has a soul that goes on to a hereafter. The Qur’ān states: “Allah receiveth (men’s) souls at the time of their death, and that (soul) which dieth not (yet) in its sleep. He keepeth that (soul) for which He hath ordained death.” (Surah 39:42, MMP) At the same time, surah 75 is entirely devoted to “Qiyāmat, or the Resurrection” (AYA), or “The Rising of the Dead” (MMP). In part it says: “I do call to witness the Resurrection Day . . . Does man think that We cannot assemble his bones? . . . He questions: ‘When is the Day of Resurrection?’ . . . Has not He [Allāh] the power to give life to the dead?”—Surah 75:1, 3, 6, 40, AYA.
According to the Qur’ān, the soul can have different destinies, which can be either a heavenly garden of paradise or the punishment of a burning hell. As the Qur’ān states: “They ask: When is the Day of Judgement? (It is) the day when they will be tormented at the Fire, (and it will be said unto them): Taste your torment (which ye inflicted).” (Surah 51:12-14, MMP) “For them [the sinners] is torment in the life of the world, and verily the doom of the Hereafter is more painful, and they have no defender from Allah.” (Surah 13:34, MMP) The question is asked: “And what will explain to thee what this is? (It is) a Fire blazing fiercely!” (Surah 101:10, 11, AYA) This dire fate is described in detail: “Lo! Those who disbelieve Our revelations, We shall expose them to the Fire. As often as their skins are consumed We shall exchange them for fresh skins that they may taste the torment. Lo! Allah is ever Mighty, Wise.” (Surah 4:56, MMP) A further description states: “Lo! hell lurketh in ambush . . . They will abide therein for ages. Therein taste they neither coolness nor (any) drink save boiling water and a paralysing cold.”—Surah 78:21, 23-25, MMP.
Muslims believe that a dead person’s soul goes to the Barzakh, or “Partition,” “the place or state in which people will be after death and before Judgment.” (Surah 23:99, 100, AYA, footnote) The soul is conscious there experiencing what is termed the “Chastisement of the Tomb” if the person had been wicked, or enjoying happiness if he had been faithful. But the faithful ones must also experience some torment because of their few sins while alive. On the judgment day, each faces his eternal destiny, which ends that intermediate state.
In contrast, the righteous are promised heavenly gardens of paradise: “And as for those who believe and do good works, We shall make them enter Gardens underneath which rivers flow to dwell therein for ever.” (Surah 4:57, MMP) “On that day the dwellers of Paradise shall think of nothing but their bliss. Together with their wives, they shall recline in shady groves upon soft couches.” (Surah 36:55, 56, NJD) “Before this We wrote in the Psalms, after the Message (given to Moses): ‘My servants, the righteous, shall inherit the earth.’” The footnote to this surah refers the reader to Psalm 25:13 and 37:11, 29, as well as to the words of Jesus at Matthew 5:5. (Surah 21:105, AYA) The reference to wives now makes us turn to another question.
Monogamy or Polygamy?
Is polygamy the rule among Muslims? While the Qur’ān permits polygamy, many Muslims have only one wife. Because of the numerous widows that were left after costly battles, the Qur’ān made room for polygamy: “And if ye fear that ye will not deal fairly by the orphans, marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess.” (Surah 4:3, MMP) A biography of Muḥammad by Ibn-Hishām mentions that Muḥammad married a wealthy widow, Khadījah, 15 years his senior. After her death he married many women. When he died he left nine widows.
Another form of marriage in Islām is called mut‛ah. It is defined as “a special contract concluded between a man and a woman through offer and acceptance of marriage for a limited period and with a specified dowry like the contract for permanent marriage.” (Islamuna, by Muṣṭafā al-Rāfi‛ī) The Sunnīs call it a marriage for pleasure, and the Shī‛ah, a marriage to be terminated in a specific period. States the same source: “The children [of such marriages] are legitimate and have the same rights as the children of a permanent marriage.” Apparently this form of temporary marriage was practiced in Muḥammad’s day, and he allowed it. Sunnīs insist that it was prohibited later, while the Imāmīs, the largest Shī‛ite group, believe that it is still in effect. In fact, many practice it, especially when a man is absent from his wife for a long period of time.
Islām and Daily Life
Islām involves five pillars, or principal obligations, and six basic beliefs. One of the obligations is that the devout Muslim turn to Mecca five times a day in prayer (ṣalāt). On the Muslim sabbath (Friday), the men flock to the mosque for prayer when they hear the haunting call of the muezzin from the minaret of the mosque. Nowadays many mosques play a recording rather than have a live voice give the call.
The mosque (Arabic, masjid) is the Muslim place of worship, described by King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia as “the cornerstone for the call to God.” He defined the mosque as “a place of prayer, study, legal and judicial activities, consultation, preaching, guidance, education and preparation. . . . The mosque is the heart of Muslim society.” These places of worship are now found all over the world. One of the most famous in history is the Mezquita (Mosque) of Córdoba, Spain, which for centuries was the largest in the world. Its central portion is now occupied by a Catholic cathedral.
Conflict With and Within Christendom
Beginning in the seventh century, Islām spread westward into North Africa, eastward to Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, and down to Indonesia. As it did so, it entered into conflict with a militant Catholic Church, which organized Crusades to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims. In 1492 Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain completed the Catholic reconquest of Spain. Muslims and Jews had to convert or be expelled from Spain. The mutual tolerance that had existed under Muslim rule in Spain later evaporated under the influence of the Catholic Inquisition. However, Islām survived and in the 20th century has experienced resurgence and great growth.
While Islām was expanding, the Catholic Church was going through its own turmoil, trying to keep unity in its ranks. But two powerful influences were about to burst on the scene, and they would shatter even further the monolithic image of that church. They were the printing press and the Bible in the language of the people. Our next chapter will discuss Christendom’s further fragmentation under those and other influences.
[Footnotes]
“Qur’ān” (which means “Recitation”) is the spelling favored by Muslim writers and the one we will use here. It should be noted that Arabic is the original language of the Qur’ān, and in English there is no universally accepted translation. In quotations the first number represents the chapter, or surah, and the second is the verse number.
Muslims believe that the Bible contains revelations of God but that some of them were falsified later.
In English the prophet’s name has various spellings (Mohammed, Muḥammad, Mahomet). Most Muslim sources prefer Muḥammad, which we will use. Turkish Muslims prefer Muhammed.
Thus, the Muslim year is given as A.H. (Latin, Anno Hegirae, year of the flight) rather than A.D. (Anno Domini, year of the Lord) or C.E. (Common Era).
For further information on the Trinity and the Bible, see the brochure Should You Believe in the Trinity? published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., 1989.
On the subject of the soul and hellfire, compare these Bible texts: Genesis 2:7; Ezekiel 18:4; Acts 3:23. See Reasoning From the Scriptures, pages 168-75; 375-80, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., 1985.

The Qur’ān and the Bible
“He has revealed to you the Book with the truth, confirming the scriptures which preceded it; for He has already revealed the Torah and the Gospel for the guidance of men, and the distinction between right and wrong.”—Surah 3:2, NJD.
“Almost all the historical narratives of the Koran have their biblical parallels . . . Adam, Noah, Abraham (mentioned about seventy times in twenty-five different sūrahs and having his name as a title for sūrah 14), Ishmael, Lot, Joseph (to whom sūrah 12 is dedicated), Moses (whose name occurs in thirty-four different sūrahs), Saul, David, Solomon, Elijah, Job and Jonah (whose name sūrah 10 bears) figure prominently. The story of the creation and fall of Adam is cited five times, the flood eight and Sodom eight. In fact the Koran shows more parallelism to the Pentateuch than to any other part of the Bible. . . .
“Of the New Testament characters Zachariah, John the Baptist, Jesus (‛Īsa) and Mary are the only ones emphasized. . . .
A comparative study of the . . . koranic and biblical narratives . . . reveals no verbal dependence [no direct quotation].”—History of the Arabs.

The Three Sources of Teaching and Guidance
The Holy Qur’ān, said to have been revealed to Muḥammad by the angel Gabriel. The Qur’ān’s meaning and words in Arabic are viewed as inspired.
The Ḥadīth, or Sunnah, “the deeds, utterances and silent approval (taqrīr) of the Prophet . . . fixed during the second century [A.H.] in the form of written ḥadīths. A ḥadīth, therefore, is a record of an action or sayings of the Prophet.” It can also be applied to the actions or sayings of any of Muḥammad’s “Companions or their Successors.” In a ḥadīth, only the meaning is viewed as inspired.—History of the Arabs.
The Sharī‛ah, or canon law, based on principles of the Qur’ān, regulates a Muslim’s entire life in the religious, political, and social senses. “All man’s acts are classified under five legal categories: (1) what is considered absolute duty (farḍ) [involving reward for acting or punishment for failing to act]; (2) commendable or meritorious actions (mustaḥabb) [involving a reward but no punishment for omission]; (3) permissible actions (jā’iz, mubāḥ), which are legally indifferent; (4) reprehensible actions (makrūh), which are disapproved but not punishable; (5) forbidden actions (ḥarām), the doing of which calls for punishment.”—History of the Arabs.

The Six Pillars of Belief
1. Belief in one God, Allāh (Surah 23:116, 117)
2. Belief in angels (Surah 2:177)
3. The divine books: Torah, Gospel, Psalms, Scrolls of Abraham, Qur’ān
4. Belief in many prophets but one message. Adam was the first prophet. Others have included Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and “the Seal of the Prophets,” Muḥammad (Surah 4:136; 33:40)
5. The last day: when all the dead will be raised from their graves
6. Belief in destiny, its good and its bad. Nothing happens that God has not decreed

The Five Pillars of Islam
1. Repeat the creed (shahādah): “No god but Allah; Muḥammad is the messenger of Allah” (Surah 33:40)
2. Prayer (ṣalāt) toward Mecca five times a day (Surah 2:144)
3. Charity (zakāh), the obligation to give a percentage of one’s income and of the value of some property (Surah 24:56)
4. Fasting (ṣawm), especially during the month-long celebration of Ramaḍān (Surah 2:183-185)
5. Pilgrimage (ḥajj). Once in a lifetime, every Muslim must make the journey to Mecca. Only illness and poverty are licit excuses (Surah 3:97)


The Bahā’ī Faith—Seeking World Unity
The Bahā’ī faith is not a sect of Islām but is an offshoot of the Bābī religion, a group in Persia (today Iran) that broke away from the Shī‛ite branch of Islām in 1844. The leader of the Bābīs was Mīrzā ‛Alī Moḥammad of Shīrāz, who proclaimed himself the Bāb (“the Gate”) and the imām-mahdī (“rightly guided leader”) from the line of Muḥammad. He was executed by the Persian authorities in 1850. In 1863 Mīrzā Ḥoseyn Alī Nūrī, a prominent member of the Bābī group, “declared himself to be ‘He whom God will make manifest,’ whom the Bāb had foretold.” He also took the name Bahā’ Ullāh (“Glory of God”) and formed a new religion, the Bahā’ī faith.
Bahā’ Ullāh was banished from Persia and was eventually imprisoned in Acco (today Acre, Israel). There he wrote his main work, al-Kitāb al-Aqdas (The Most Holy Book), and developed the doctrine of the Bahā’ī faith into a comprehensive teaching. At Bahā’ Ullāh’s death, the leadership of the fledgling religion passed to his son ‛Abd ol-Bahā’, then to his great-grandson, Shoghi Effendi Rabbānī, and in 1963 to an elected administrative body known as the Universal House of Justice.
Bahā’īs believe that God has revealed himself to man by means of “Divine Manifestations,” including Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Jesus, Muḥammad, the Bāb, and Bahā’ Ullāh. They believe that these messengers were provided to guide mankind through an evolutionary process in which the appearance of the Bāb initiated a new age for mankind. The Bahā’īs say that to date his message is the fullest revelation of God’s will and that it is the primary God-given instrument that will make world unity possible.—1 Timothy 2:5, 6.
One of the basic precepts of Bahā’ī is “that all the great religions of the world are divine in origin, that their basic principles are in complete harmony.” They “differ only in the nonessential aspects of their doctrines.”—2 Corinthians 6:14-18; 1 John 5:19, 20.
Bahā’ī beliefs include the oneness of God, the soul’s immortality, and the evolution (biological, spiritual, and social) of mankind. On the other hand, they reject the common concept of angels. They also reject the Trinity, the reincarnation teaching of Hinduism, and man’s fall from perfection and subsequent ransom through the blood of Jesus Christ.—Romans 5:12; Matthew 20:28.
The brotherhood of man and the equality of women are major features of Bahā’ī belief. Bahā’īs practice monogamy. At least once a day, they pray any one of three prayers revealed by Bahā’ Ullāh. They practice fasting from sunup to sundown during the 19 days of the Bahā’ī month of ‛Alā, which falls in March. (The Bahā’ī calendar consists of 19 months, each having 19 days, with certain intercalary days.)
The Bahā’ī faith does not have many set rituals, nor does it have clergy. Any who profess faith in Bahā’ Ullāh and accept his teachings may be enrolled as members. They meet for worship on the first day of every Bahā’ī month.
The Bahā’īs see themselves as having the mission of the spiritual conquest of the planet. They try to spread their faith through conversation, example, participation in community projects, and information campaigns. They believe in absolute obedience to the laws of the country in which they reside, and though they vote, they abstain from participation in politics. They prefer noncombatant duty in the armed forces when possible but are not conscientious objectors.
As a missionary religion, Bahā’ī has experienced rapid growth in the last few years. The Bahā’īs estimate that there are nearly 5,000,000 believers worldwide, though actual adult enrollment in the faith is presently a little over 2,300,000.

Chapter 11
Apostasy—The Way to God Blocked
WHY are Christendom’s first 400 years of history so important? For the same reason that the first few years of a child’s life are important—because they are the formative years when the foundation is laid for the future personality of the individual. What do Christendom’s early centuries reveal?
Before we answer that question, let us recall a truth that Jesus Christ expressed: “Go in through the narrow gate; because broad and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are the ones going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are the ones finding it.” The road of expediency is broad; that of right principles is narrow.—Matthew 7:13, 14.
At the inception of Christianity, there were two ways available to those espousing that unpopular faith—hold to the uncompromising teachings and principles of Christ and the Scriptures or gravitate toward the wide and easygoing path of compromise with the world of that time. As we will see, the history of the first 400 years shows which path the majority eventually chose.
The Seduction of Philosophy
Historian Will Durant explains: “The Church took over some religious customs and forms common in pre-Christian [pagan] Rome—the stole and other vestments of pagan priests, the use of incense and holy water in purifications, the burning of candles and an everlasting light before the altar, the worship of the saints, the architecture of the basilica, the law of Rome as a basis for canon law, the title of Pontifex Maximus for the Supreme Pontiff, and, in the fourth century, the Latin language . . . Soon the bishops, rather than the Roman prefects, would be the source of order and the seat of power in the cities; the metropolitans, or archbishops, would support, if not supplant, the provincial governors; and the synod of bishops would succeed the provincial assembly. The Roman Church followed in the footsteps of the Roman state.”—The Story of Civilization: Part III—Caesar and Christ.
This attitude of compromise with the Roman world stands in stark contrast to the teachings of Christ and the apostles. The apostle Peter counseled: “Beloved ones, . . . I am arousing your clear thinking faculties by way of a reminder, that you should remember the sayings previously spoken by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles. You, therefore, beloved ones, having this advance knowledge, be on your guard that you may not be led away with them by the error of the law-defying people and fall from your own steadfastness.” Paul clearly counseled: “Do not become unevenly yoked with unbelievers. For what fellowship do righteousness and lawlessness have? Or what sharing does light have with darkness? . . . ‘“Therefore get out from among them, and separate yourselves,” says Jehovah, “and quit touching the unclean thing”’; ‘“and I will take you in.”’”—2 Peter 3:1, 2, 17; 2 Corinthians 6:14-17; Revelation 18:2-5.
In spite of this clear admonition, apostate Christians of the second century took on the trappings of the pagan Roman religion. They moved away from their pure Biblical origins and instead clothed themselves with pagan Roman garb and titles and became imbued with Greek philosophy. Professor Wolfson of Harvard University explains in The Crucible of Christianity that in the second century, there was a great influx into Christianity of “philosophically trained gentiles.” These admired the wisdom of the Greeks and thought they saw similarities between Greek philosophy and teachings of the Scriptures. Wolfson continues: “Sometimes they variously express themselves to the effect that philosophy is God’s special gift to the Greeks by way of human reason as Scripture is to the Jews by way of direct revelation.” He continues: “The Fathers of the Church . . . entered upon their systematic undertaking to show how, behind the homely language in which Scripture likes to express itself, there are hidden the teachings of the philosophers couched in the obscure technical terms coined in their Academy, Lyceum, and Porch [centers for philosophical discussion].”
Such an attitude left the way open for Greek philosophy and terminology to infiltrate Christendom’s teachings, especially in the fields of Trinitarian doctrine and the belief in an immortal soul. As Wolfson states: “The [church] Fathers began to look in the stockpile of philosophic terminology for two good technical terms, of which one would be used as a designation of the reality of the distinctness of each member of the Trinity as an individual and the other would be used as a designation of their underlying common unity.” Yet, they had to admit that “the conception of a triune God is a mystery which cannot be solved by human reason.” In contrast, Paul had clearly recognized the danger of such contamination and ‘perversion of the good news’ when he wrote to the Galatian and Colossian Christians: “Look out: perhaps there may be someone who will carry you off as his prey through the philosophy [Greek, phi•lo•so•phi′as] and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary things of the world and not according to Christ.”—Galatians 1:7-9; Colossians 2:8; 1 Corinthians 1:22, 23.
Resurrection Annulled
As we have seen throughout this book, man has constantly struggled with the enigma of his short and finite existence that ends in death. As German author Gerhard Herm stated in his book The Celts—The People Who Came Out of the Darkness: “Religion is among other things a way of reconciling people to the fact that some day they must die, whether by the promise of a better life beyond the grave, rebirth, or both.” Virtually every religion depends on the belief that the human soul is immortal and that after death it journeys to an afterlife or that it transmigrates to another creature.
Nearly all the religions of Christendom today also follow that belief. Miguel de Unamuno, a prominent 20th-century Spanish scholar, wrote about Jesus: “He believed rather in the resurrection of the flesh [such as Lazarus’ case], according to the Jewish manner, not in the immortality of the soul, according to the [Greek] Platonic manner. . . . The proofs of this can be seen in any honest book of interpretation.” He concluded: “The immortality of the soul . . . is a pagan philosophical dogma.” (La Agonía Del Cristianismo [The Agony of Christianity]) That “pagan philosophical dogma” infiltrated into Christendom’s teaching, even though Christ plainly had no such thought.—Matthew 10:28; John 5:28, 29; 11:23, 24.
The subtle influence of Greek philosophy was a key factor in the apostasy that followed the death of the apostles. The Greek immortal soul teaching implied a need for various destinations for the soul—heaven, hellfire, purgatory, paradise, Limbo. By manipulating such teachings, it became easy for a priestly class to keep their flocks submissive and in fear of the Hereafter and to extract gifts and donations from them. Which leads us to another question: How did Christendom’s separate priestly clergy class originate?—John 8:44; 1 Timothy 4:1, 2.
How the Clergy Class Was Formed
Another indication of apostasy was the retreat from the general ministry of all Christians, as Jesus and the apostles had taught, to the exclusive priesthood and hierarchy that developed in Christendom. (Matthew 5:14-16; Romans 10:13-15; 1 Peter 3:15) During the first century, after Jesus’ death, his apostles, along with other spiritually qualified Christian elders in Jerusalem, served to counsel and direct the Christian congregation. None exercised superiority over the others.—Galatians 2:9.
In the year 49 C.E., it became necessary for them to meet together in Jerusalem to resolve questions affecting Christians in general. The Bible account tells us that after open discussion, “the apostles and the older men [pre•sby′te•roi] together with the whole congregation favored sending chosen men from among them to Antioch along with Paul and Barnabas, . . . and by their hand they wrote: ‘The apostles and the older men, brothers, to those brothers in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia who are from the nations: Greetings!’” Evidently the apostles and elders served as an administrative governing agency for the widespread Christian congregations.—Acts 15:22, 23.
Now since that governing group in Jerusalem was the early Christian arrangement for general oversight for all Christians, what system of direction did they have in each congregation, at the local level? Paul’s letter to Timothy makes it clear that the congregations had overseers (Greek, e•pi′sko•pos, source of the word “episcopal”) who were spiritual elders (pre•sby′te•roi), men who were qualified by their conduct and their spirituality to teach their fellow Christians. (1 Timothy 3:1-7; 5:17) In the first century, these men did not constitute a separate clergy class. They did not wear any distinctive garb. Their spirituality was their distinction. In fact, each congregation had a body of elders (overseers), not a monarchical one-man rule.—Acts 20:17; Philippians 1:1.
It was only as time passed that the word e•pi′sko•pos (overseer, superintendent) became converted to “bishop,” meaning a priest with jurisdiction over other members of the clergy in his diocese. As the Spanish Jesuit Bernardino Llorca explains: “First, there was not sufficient distinction made between the bishops and the presbyters, and attention was only paid to the meaning of the words: bishop is the equivalent of superintendent; presbyter is the equivalent of older man. . . . But little by little the distinction became clearer, designating with the name bishop the more important superintendents, who possessed the supreme priestly authority and the faculty to lay on hands and confer the priesthood.” (Historia de la Iglesia Católica [History of the Catholic Church]) In fact, bishops began to function in a kind of monarchical system, especially from the beginning of the fourth century. A hierarchy, or ruling body of clergy, was established, and in time the bishop of Rome, claiming to be a successor to Peter, was acknowledged by many as the supreme bishop and pope.
Today the position of bishop in the different churches of Christendom is a position of prestige and power, usually well remunerated, and often identified with the elite ruling class of each nation. But between their proud and elevated situation and the simplicity of organization under Christ and the elders, or overseers, of the early Christian congregations, there is an enormous difference. And what shall we say of the gulf between Peter and his so-called successors, who have ruled in the sumptuous setting of the Vatican?—Luke 9:58; 1 Peter 5:1-3.
Papal Power and Prestige
Among the early congregations that accepted direction from the apostles and elders in Jerusalem was the one in Rome, where Christian truth probably arrived sometime after Pentecost 33 C.E. (Acts 2:10) Like any other Christian congregation of the time, it had elders, who served as a body of overseers without any one of them having the primacy. Certainly none of the earliest overseers in the Rome congregation were viewed by their contemporaries as bishops or as a pope, since the monarchical episcopate at Rome had not yet developed. The starting point of the monarchical, or one-man, episcopate is hard to pin down. Evidence indicates that it began to develop in the second century.—Romans 16:3-16; Philippians 1:1.
The title “pope” (from the Greek pa′pas, father) was not used during the first two centuries. Former Jesuit Michael Walsh explains: “The first time a Bishop of Rome was called ‘Pope’ seems to have been in the third century, and the title was given to Pope Callistus . . . By the end of the fifth century ‘Pope’ usually meant the Bishop of Rome and no one else. It was not until the eleventh century, however, that a Pope could insist that the title applied to him alone.”—An Illustrated History of the Popes.
One of the first bishops of Rome to impose his authority was Pope Leo I (pope, 440-461 C.E.). Michael Walsh further explains: “Leo appropriated the once pagan title of Pontifex Maximus, still used by the popes today, and borne, until towards the end of the fourth century, by Roman Emperors.” Leo I based his actions on the Catholic interpretation of Jesus’ words found at Matthew 16:18, 19. He “declared that because St. Peter was the first among the Apostles, St. Peter’s church should be accorded primacy among the churches.” (Man’s Religions) By this move, Leo I made it clear that while the emperor held temporal power in Constantinople in the East, he exercised spiritual power from Rome in the West. This power was further illustrated when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 C.E.
Since 1929 the pope of Rome has been viewed by secular governments as the ruler of a separate sovereign state, Vatican City. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church, like no other religious organization, can send diplomatic representatives, nuncios, to the governments of the world. (John 18:36) The pope is honored with many titles, some of which are Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor to the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Sovereign of the Vatican City. He is carried with pomp and ceremony. He is given the honors assigned to a head of State. In contrast, note how Peter, supposedly the first pope and bishop of Rome, reacted when the Roman centurion Cornelius fell down at his feet to do obeisance to him: “Peter lifted him up, saying: ‘Rise; I myself am also a man.’”—Acts 10:25, 26; Matthew 23:8-12.
The question now is, How did so much power and prestige ever accrue to the apostate church of those early centuries? How was the simplicity and humility of Christ and the early Christians converted into the pride and pomp of Christendom?
Christendom’s Foundation
The turning point for this new religion in the Roman Empire was 313 C.E., the date of Emperor Constantine’s so-called conversion to “Christianity.” How did this conversion come about? In 306 C.E., Constantine succeeded his father and eventually, with Licinius, became coruler of the Roman Empire. He was influenced by his mother’s devotion to Christianity and his own belief in divine protection. Before he went to fight a battle near Rome at the Milvian Bridge in 312 C.E., he claimed that he was told in a dream to paint the “Christian” monogram—the Greek letters khi and rho, the first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek—on his soldiers’ shields. With this ‘sacred talisman,’ Constantine’s forces defeated his enemy Maxentius.
Shortly after winning the battle, Constantine claimed that he had become a believer, although he was not baptized until just prior to his death some 24 years later. He went on to obtain the support of the professed Christians in his empire by “his adoption of the [Greek letters] Chi-Rho [Artwork—Greek characters] as his emblem . . . The Chi-Rho had, however, already been used as a ligature [joining of letters] in both pagan and Christian contexts.”—The Crucible of Christianity, edited by Arnold Toynbee.
As a result, the foundation of Christendom was laid. As British broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge wrote in his book The End of Christendom: “Christendom began with the Emperor Constantine.” However, he also made the perceptive comment: “You might even say that Christ himself abolished Christendom before it began by stating that his kingdom was not of this world—one of the most far reaching and important of all his statements.” And one most widely ignored by Christendom’s religious and political rulers.—John 18:36.
With Constantine’s support, Christendom’s religion became the official State religion of Rome. Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion, explains: “Christian bishops, once targets for arrest, torture, and execution, now received tax exemptions, gifts from the imperial treasury, prestige, and even influence at court; their churches gained new wealth, power, and prominence.” They had become friends of the emperor, friends of the Roman world.—James 4:4.
Constantine, Heresy, and Orthodoxy
Why was Constantine’s “conversion” so significant? Because as emperor he had a powerful influence in the affairs of the doctrinally divided “Christian” church, and he wanted unity in his empire. At that time debate was raging among the Greek- and Latin-speaking bishops about “the relation between the ‘Word’ or ‘Son’ of ‘God’ which had been incarnate in Jesus, and ‘God’ himself, now called ‘the Father’—his name, Yahweh, having been generally forgotten.” (The Columbia History of the World) Some favored the Biblically supported viewpoint that Christ, the Lo′gos, was created and therefore subordinate to the Father. (Matthew 24:36; John 14:28; 1 Corinthians 15:25-28) Among these was Arius, a priest in Alexandria, Egypt. In fact, R. P. C. Hanson, a professor of divinity, states: “There is no theologian in the Eastern or the Western Church before the [fourth century] outbreak of the Arian Controversy, who does not in some sense regard the Son as subordinate to the Father.”—The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God.
Others considered that viewpoint of Christ’s subordination to be heresy and veered more toward the worship of Jesus as “God Incarnate.” Yet, Professor Hanson states that the period under question (the fourth century) “was not a history of the defence of an agreed and settled [Trinitarian] orthodoxy against the assaults of open heresy [Arianism]. On the subject which was primarily under discussion there was not as yet any orthodox doctrine.” He continues: “All sides believed that they had the authority of Scripture in their favour. Each described the others as unorthodox, untraditional and unScriptural.” The religious ranks were thoroughly divided on this theological issue.—John 20:17.
Constantine wanted unity in his realm, and in 325 C.E. he called for a council of his bishops at Nicaea, located in the Eastern, Greek-speaking domain of his empire, across the Bosporus from the new city of Constantinople. It is said that anywhere from 250 to 318 bishops attended, only a minority of the total number, and most of those attending were from the Greek-speaking region. Even Pope Sylvester I was not present. After fierce debate, out of that unrepresentative council came the Nicene Creed with its heavy bias toward Trinitarian thought. Yet it failed to settle the doctrinal argument. It did not clarify the role of God’s holy spirit in Trinitarian theology. Debate raged for decades, and it required more councils and the authority of different emperors and the use of banishment to achieve eventual conformity. It was a victory for theology and a defeat for those who held to the Scriptures.—Romans 3:3, 4.
Over the centuries, one result of the Trinity teaching has been that the one true God Jehovah has been submerged in the quagmire of Christendom’s God-Christ theology. The next logical consequence of that theology was that if Jesus really was God Incarnate, then Jesus’ mother, Mary, was obviously the “Mother of God.” Over the years, that has led to veneration of Mary in many different forms, this in spite of the total lack of texts that speak of Mary in any role of importance except as the humble biologic mother of Jesus. (Luke 1:26-38, 46-56) Over the centuries the Mother-of-God teaching has been developed and adorned by the Roman Catholic Church, with the result that many Catholics venerate Mary far more fervently than they worship God.
Christendom’s Schisms
Another characteristic of apostasy is that it leads to division and fragmentation. The apostle Paul had prophesied: “I know that after my going away oppressive wolves will enter in among you and will not treat the flock with tenderness, and from among you yourselves men will rise and speak twisted things to draw away the disciples after themselves.” Paul had given clear counsel to the Corinthians when he stated: “Now I exhort you, brothers, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you should all speak in agreement, and that there should not be divisions among you, but that you may be fitly united in the same mind and in the same line of thought.” In spite of Paul’s exhortation, apostasy and divisions soon took root.—Acts 20:29, 30; 1 Corinthians 1:10.
Within a few decades of the death of the apostles, schisms were already evident among the Christians. Will Durant states: “Celsus [second-century opponent of Christianity] himself had sarcastically observed that Christians were ‘split up into ever so many factions, each individual desiring to have his own party.’ About 187 [C.E.] Irenaeus listed twenty varieties of Christianity; about 384 [C.E.] Epiphanius counted eighty.”—The Story of Civilization: Part III—Caesar and Christ.
Constantine favored the Eastern, Greek, side of his empire by having a vast new capital city built in what is today Turkey. He named it Constantinople (modern Istanbul). The result was that over the centuries the Catholic Church became polarized and split both by language and by geography—Latin-speaking Rome in the West versus Greek-speaking Constantinople in the East.
Divisive debates about aspects of the still-developing Trinity teaching continued to cause turmoil in Christendom. Another council was held in 451 C.E. at Chalcedon to define the character of Christ’s “natures.” While the West accepted the creed issued by this council, Eastern churches disagreed, leading to the formation of the Coptic Church in Egypt and Abyssinia and the “Jacobite” churches of Syria and Armenia. The unity of the Catholic Church was constantly threatened by divisions on abstruse theological matters, especially regarding the definition of the Trinity doctrine.
Another cause for division was the veneration of images. During the eighth century, the Eastern bishops rebelled against this idolatry and entered into what is called their iconoclastic, or image-destroying, period. In time they returned to the use of icons.—Exodus 20:4-6; Isaiah 44:14-18.
A further big test came about when the Western church added the Latin word filioque (“and from the Son”) to the Nicene Creed to indicate that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son. The end result of this sixth-century emendation was a rift when “in 876 a synod [of bishops] at Constantinople condemned the pope both for his political activities and because he did not correct the heresy of the filioque clause. This action was part of the East’s entire rejection of the pope’s claim of universal jurisdiction over the Church.” (Man’s Religions) In the year 1054, the pope’s representative excommunicated the patriarch of Constantinople, who in return put a curse on the pope. That split eventually led to the formation of the Eastern Orthodox Churches—Greek, Russian, Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian, Serbian, and other self-governing churches.
Another movement was also beginning to cause turmoil in the church. In the 12th century, Peter Waldo, from Lyons, France, “engaged some scholars to translate the Bible into the langue d’oc [a regional language] of south France. He studied the translation zealously, and concluded that Christians should live like the apostles—without individual property.” (The Age of Faith, by Will Durant) He started a preaching movement that became known as the Waldenses. These rejected the Catholic priesthood, indulgences, purgatory, transubstantiation, and other traditional Catholic practices and beliefs. They spread into other countries. The Council of Toulouse tried to check them in 1229 by banning the possession of Scriptural books. Only books of liturgy were allowed and then only in the dead language of Latin. But more religious division and persecution was yet to come.
Persecution of the Albigenses
Yet another movement got started in the 12th century in the south of France—the Albigenses (also known as Cathari), named after the town of Albi, where they had many followers. They had their own celibate clergy class, who expected to be greeted with reverence. They believed that Jesus spoke figuratively in his last supper when he said of the bread, “This is my body.” (Matthew 26:26, NAB) They rejected the doctrines of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, hellfire, and purgatory. Thus they actively put in doubt the teachings of Rome. Pope Innocent III gave instructions that the Albigenses be persecuted. “If necessary,” he said, “suppress them with the sword.”
A crusade was mounted against the “heretics,” and the Catholic crusaders massacred 20,000 men, women, and children in Béziers, France. After much bloodshed, peace came in 1229, with the Albigenses defeated. The Council of Narbonne “forbade the possession of any part of the Bible by laymen.” The root of the problem for the Catholic Church was evidently the existence of the Bible in the language of the people.
The next step that the church took was to establish the Inquisition, a tribunal set up to suppress heresy. Already a spirit of intolerance possessed the people, who were superstitious and all too willing to lynch and murder “heretics.” The conditions in the 13th century lent themselves to the abuse of power by the church. However, “heretics condemned by the Church were to be delivered to the ‘secular arm’—the local authorities—and burned to death.” (The Age of Faith) By leaving the actual executions to the secular authorities, the church would ostensibly be free of bloodguilt. The Inquisition started an era of religious persecution that resulted in abuses, false and anonymous denunciations, murder, robbery, torture, and the slow death of thousands who dared to believe differently from the church. Freedom of religious expression was stifled. Was there any hope for people who were seeking the true God? Chapter 13 will answer that.
While all of this was happening in Christendom, a lone Arab in the Middle East took a stand against the religious apathy and idolatry of his own people. He started a religious movement in the seventh century that today commands the obedience and submission of nearly one thousand million people. That movement is Islām. Our next chapter will consider the history of its prophet-founder and explain some of his teachings and their source.
[Footnotes]
The expressions “immortal soul,” “hellfire,” “purgatory,” and “Limbo” are nowhere found in the original Hebrew and Greek of the Bible. In contrast, the Greek word for “resurrection” (a•na′sta•sis) occurs 42 times.
The Greek word e•pi′sko•pos literally means ‘one who watches over.’ In Latin it became episcopus, and in Old English it was transformed into “biscop” and later, in Middle English, to “bishop.”
A popular legend says that Constantine saw a vision of a cross with the Latin words “In hoc signo vinces” (In this sign conquer). Some historians say it was more likely in Greek, “En toutoi nika” (In this conquer). The legend is doubted by some scholars because it contains anachronisms.
The Oxford Dictionary of Popes states regarding Sylvester I: “Although pope for almost twenty-two years of the reign of Constantine the Great (306-37), an epoch of dramatic developments for the church, he seems to have played an insignificant part in the great events that were taking place. . . . There were certainly bishops whom Constantine made his confidants, and with whom he concerted his ecclesiastical policies; but [Sylvester] was not one of them.”
For a detailed consideration of the Trinity debate, see the 32-page brochure Should You Believe in the Trinity? published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., 1989.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, is mentioned by name or as his mother in 24 different texts in the four Gospels and once in Acts. She is not mentioned in any apostolic letter.

Early Christians and Pagan Rome
“As the Christian movement emerged within the Roman Empire, it challenged pagan converts, too, to change their attitudes and behavior. Many pagans who had been brought up to regard marriage essentially as a social and economic arrangement, homosexual relationships as an expected element of male education, prostitution, both male and female, as both ordinary and legal, and divorce, abortion, contraception, and exposure [to death] of unwanted infants as matters of practical expedience, embraced, to the astonishment of their families, the Christian message, which opposed these practices.”—Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, by Elaine Pagels.

Christianity Versus Christendom
Porphyry, a third-century philosopher from Tyre and an opposer of Christianity, raised the question “as to whether followers of Jesus, rather than Jesus himself, were responsible for the distinctive form of the Christian religion. Porphyry (and Julian [fourth-century Roman emperor and opposer of Christianity]) showed, on the basis of the New Testament, that Jesus did not call himself God and that he preached, not about himself, but about the one God, the God of all. It was his followers who abandoned his teaching and introduced a new way of their own in which Jesus (not the one God) was the object of worship and adoration. . . . [Porphyry] put his finger on a troubling issue for Christian thinkers: does the Christian faith rest on the preaching of Jesus or on the ideas forged by his disciples in the generations after his death?”—The Christians as the Romans Saw Them.

Peter and the Papacy
At Matthew 16:18, Jesus said to the apostle Peter: “And I tell you, you are Peter [Greek, Pe′tros], and on this rock [Greek, pe′tra] I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.” (RS) Based on this, the Catholic Church claims that Jesus built his church on Peter, who, they say, was the first of an unbroken line of bishops of Rome, and Peter’s successors.
Who was the rock that Jesus indicated at Matthew 16:18, Peter or Jesus? The context shows that the point of the discussion was the identification of Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” as Peter himself confessed. (Matthew 16:16, RS) Logically, therefore, Jesus himself would be that solid rock foundation of the church, not Peter, who would later deny Christ three times.—Matthew 26:33-35, 69-75.
How do we know that Christ is the foundation stone? By Peter’s own testimony, when he wrote: “Coming to him as to a living stone, rejected, it is true, by men, but chosen, precious, with God . . . For it is contained in Scripture: ‘Look! I am laying in Zion a stone, chosen, a foundation cornerstone, precious; and no one exercising faith in it will by any means come to disappointment.’” Paul also stated: “And you have been built up upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, while Christ Jesus himself is the foundation cornerstone.”—1 Peter 2:4-8; Ephesians 2:20.
There is no evidence in Scripture or history that Peter was regarded as having primacy among his peers. He makes no mention of it in his own letters, and the other three Gospels—including Mark’s (apparently related by Peter to Mark)—do not even mention Jesus’ statement to Peter.—Luke 22:24-26; Acts 15:6-22; Galatians 2:11-14.
There is not even any absolute proof that Peter was ever in Rome. (1 Peter 5:13) When Paul visited Jerusalem, “James and Cephas [Peter] and John, the ones who seemed to be pillars,” gave him support. So at that time Peter was one of at least three pillars in the congregation. He was not a “pope,” nor was he known as such or as a primate “bishop” in Jerusalem.—Galatians 2:7-9; Acts 28:16, 30, 31.

Chapter 10
Christianity—Was Jesus the Way to God?
So far, with the exception of the chapter on Judaism, we have considered major religions that are based to a large extent on mythology. Now we will examine another religion that claims to bring mankind nearer to God—Christianity. What is the basis for Christianity—myth or historical fact?
THE history of Christendom, with its wars, inquisitions, crusades, and religious hypocrisy, has not helped the cause of Christianity. Devout Muslims and others point to the moral corruption and decadence of the Western, “Christian” world as a basis for rejecting Christianity. Indeed, the so-called Christian nations have lost their moral rudder and have suffered shipwreck on the rocks of faithlessness, greed, and self-indulgence.
That the standards of original Christianity were different from the permissive mores of today is attested to by Professor Elaine Pagels in her book Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, wherein she states: “Many Christians of the first four centuries took pride in their sexual restraint; they eschewed polygamy and often divorce as well, which Jewish tradition allowed; and they repudiated extramarital sexual practices commonly accepted among their pagan contemporaries, practices including prostitution and homosexuality.”
Therefore, it is fair to ask, Is Christendom’s history and its modern moral state a true reflection of the teachings of Jesus Christ? What kind of man was Jesus? Did he help to bring mankind nearer to God? Was he the promised Messiah of Hebrew prophecy? These are some of the questions we shall consider in this chapter.
Jesus—What Were His Credentials?
In earlier chapters we have seen the prominent role that mythology has played in nearly all the major religions of the world. Yet, when we turned to the origins of Judaism in our previous chapter, we did not start with a myth but with the historical reality of Abraham, his forebears, and his descendants. With Christianity and its founder, Jesus, we likewise start, not with mythology, but with a historical personage .
The first verse of the Christian Greek Scriptures, commonly known as the New Testament, states: “The book of the history of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” (Matthew 1:1) Is that an idle claim presented by Matthew, a former Jewish tax collector and an immediate disciple and biographer of Jesus? No. The following 15 verses spell out Abraham’s line of descendants down to Jacob, who “became father to Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.” Therefore, Jesus really was a descendant of Abraham, Judah, and David and as such held three of the credentials of the foretold “seed” of Genesis 3:15 and of Abraham.—Genesis 22:18; 49:10; 1 Chronicles 17:11.
Another of the credentials for the Messianic Seed would be his place of birth. Where was Jesus born? Matthew tells us that Jesus was “born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king.” (Matthew 2:1) Physician Luke’s account confirms that fact, telling us regarding Jesus’ future adoptive father: “Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to David’s city, which is called Bethlehem, because of his being a member of the house and family of David, to get registered with Mary, who had been given him in marriage as promised, at present heavy with child.”—Luke 2:4, 5.
Why was it important that Jesus be born in Bethlehem rather than in Nazareth or any other town? Because of a prophecy uttered during the eighth century B.C.E. by the Hebrew prophet Micah: “And you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, the one too little to get to be among the thousands of Judah, from you there will come out to me the one who is to become ruler in Israel, whose origin is from early times, from the days of time indefinite.” (Micah 5:2) Thus, by his place of birth, Jesus held another of the credentials for being the promised Seed and Messiah.—John 7:42.
In fact, Jesus fulfilled many more prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures, thus proving that he had all the credentials for being the promised Messiah. You can check some of these in the Bible. But now let us briefly examine Jesus’ message and his ministry.
Jesus’ Life Points the Way
The Bible account tells us that Jesus was reared as a normal Jewish youth of his time, attending the local synagogue and the temple in Jerusalem. (Luke 2:41-52) When he reached the age of 30, he started his public ministry. First he went to his cousin John, who was baptizing Jews in symbol of repentance in the river Jordan. Luke’s account tells us: “Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus also was baptized and, as he was praying, the heaven was opened up and the holy spirit in bodily shape like a dove came down upon him, and a voice came out of heaven: ‘You are my Son, the beloved; I have approved you.’”—Luke 3:21-23; John 1:32-34.
In due course, Jesus entered upon his ministry as the anointed Son of God. He went throughout Galilee and Judea preaching the message of the Kingdom of God and performing miracles, such as healing the sick. He accepted no payment and did not look for wealth or self-aggrandizement. In fact, he said that there is more happiness in giving than there is in receiving. He also taught his disciples how to preach.—Matthew 8:20; 10:7-13; Acts 20:35.
When we analyze Jesus’ message and the methods he used, we see a distinct difference between his style and that of many of Christendom’s preachers. He did not manipulate the masses with cheap emotionalism or with hellfire scare tactics. Rather, Jesus used simple logic and parables, or illustrations, from everyday life to appeal to the heart and the mind. His famous Sermon on the Mount is an outstanding example of his teachings and methods. Included in that sermon is Jesus’ model prayer, in which he gives a clear indication of Christian priorities by putting the sanctifying of God’s name in first place. —Matthew 5:1–7:29; 13:3-53; Luke 6:17-49.
In his dealings with his followers and with the public in general, Jesus manifested love and compassion. (Mark 6:30-34) While preaching the message of God’s Kingdom, he also personally practiced love and humility. Thus, in the final hours of his life, he could say to his disciples: “I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves.” (John 13:34, 35) Therefore, the essence of Christianity in practice is self-sacrificing love based on principle. (Matthew 22:37-40) In practice this means that a Christian should love even his enemies, although he may hate their evil works. (Luke 6:27-31) Think about that for a moment. What a different world this would be if everyone actually practiced that form of love!—Romans 12:17-21; 13:8-10.
Yet, what Jesus taught was far more than an ethic or philosophy, such as those taught by Confucius and Lao-tzu. Furthermore, Jesus did not teach, as did the Buddha, that one can work out one’s own salvation by the pathway of knowledge and enlightenment. Rather, he pointed to God as the source of salvation when he said: “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, in order that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life. For God sent forth his Son into the world, not for him to judge the world, but for the world to be saved through him.”—John 3:16, 17.
By manifesting his Father’s love in his own words and deeds, Jesus drew people closer to God. That is one reason why he could say: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. . . . He that has seen me has seen the Father also. How is it you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in union with the Father and the Father is in union with me? The things I say to you men I do not speak of my own originality; but the Father who remains in union with me is doing his works. . . . You heard that I said to you, I am going away and I am coming back to you. If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going my way to the Father, because the Father is greater than I am.” (John 14:6-28) Yes, Jesus was “the way and the truth and the life” because he was leading those Jewish people back to his Father, their true God, Jehovah. Therefore, with Jesus mankind’s search for God suddenly took on impetus because God, in his supreme love, had sent Jesus to the earth as a beacon of light and truth to lead men to the Father.—John 1:9-14; 6:44; 8:31, 32.
On the basis of the ministry and example of Jesus, the missionary Paul could later say to the Greeks in Athens: “And [God] made out of one man every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth, and he decreed the appointed times and the set limits of the dwelling of men, for them to seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him, although, in fact, he is not far off from each one of us. For by him we have life and move and exist.” (Acts 17:26-28) Yes, God can be found if a person is willing to make the effort to search for him. (Matthew 7:7, 8) God has made himself and his love manifest in that he has furnished an earth that supports a seemingly endless variety of life. He supplies what is necessary to all mankind, whether they be righteous or unrighteous. He has also provided mankind with his written Word, the Bible, and he sent his Son as a redeeming sacrifice. Moreover, God has provided the assistance people need to help them find the way to Him.—Matthew 5:43-45; Acts 14:16, 17; Romans 3:23-26.
Of course, Christian love must be manifested not just by words but more importantly by deeds. For that reason the apostle Paul wrote: “Love is long-suffering and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, does not get puffed up, does not behave indecently, does not look for its own interests, does not become provoked. It does not keep account of the injury. It does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”—1 Corinthians 13:4-8.
Jesus also made clear how important it is to proclaim the Kingdom of the heavens—God’s rule over submissive mankind.—Matthew 10:7; Mark 13:10.
Every Christian an Evangelizer
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus emphasized to the crowds their responsibility to illuminate others by their words and actions. He said: “You are the light of the world. A city cannot be hid when situated upon a mountain. People light a lamp and set it, not under the measuring basket, but upon the lampstand, and it shines upon all those in the house. Likewise let your light shine before men, that they may see your fine works and give glory to your Father who is in the heavens.” (Matthew 5:14-16) Jesus trained his disciples so that they would know how to preach and teach during their travels as itinerant ministers. And what was their message to be? That which Jesus himself preached, the Kingdom of God, which would rule the earth in righteousness. As Jesus explained on one occasion: “Also to other cities I must declare the good news of the kingdom of God, because for this I was sent forth.” (Luke 4:43; 8:1; 10:1-12) He also stated that part of the sign identifying the last days would be that “this good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations; and then the end will come.”—Matthew 24:3-14.
In 33 C.E., before he finally ascended to heaven, the resurrected Jesus instructed his disciples: “All authority has been given me in heaven and on the earth. Go therefore and make disciples of people of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit, teaching them to observe all the things I have commanded you. And, look! I am with you all the days until the conclusion of the system of things.” (Matthew 28:18-20) This is one reason why Christianity, from its very inception, was an active, proselytizing religion that provoked the anger and jealousy of the followers of the prevailing Greek and Roman religions of that day, which were based on mythology. The persecution of Paul in Ephesus clearly illustrated that fact.—Acts 19:23-41.
The questions now are, What did the message of the Kingdom of God offer concerning the dead? What hope for the dead did Christ preach? Was he offering salvation from “hellfire” for the “immortal souls” of his believers? Or what?—Matthew 4:17.
Hope of Everlasting Life
Perhaps the clearest insight into the hope that Jesus preached can be gained from what he said and did when his friend Lazarus died. How did Jesus view this death? Setting out for Lazarus’ home, Jesus said to his disciples: “Lazarus our friend has gone to rest, but I am journeying there to awaken him from sleep.” (John 11:11) Jesus compared Lazarus’ death state to sleep. In a deep sleep, we are conscious of nothing, which agrees with the Hebrew expression at Ecclesiastes 9:5: “For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all.”
Although Lazarus had been dead four days, we note that Jesus said nothing about Lazarus’ soul being in heaven, hell, or purgatory! When Jesus arrived at Bethany and Martha, Lazarus’ sister, came out to meet him, he said to her, “Your brother will rise.” How did she answer? Did she say he was already in heaven? Martha answered: “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.” That clearly shows that the Jewish hope at that time was the resurrection, a return to life here on earth.—John 11:23, 24, 38, 39.
Jesus responded: “I am the resurrection and the life. He that exercises faith in me, even though he dies, will come to life; and everyone that is living and exercises faith in me will never die at all. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25, 26) To prove his point, Jesus went to the cave where Lazarus was entombed and called him forth alive in the sight of his sisters, Mary and Martha, and neighbors. The account continues: “Therefore many of the Jews that had come to Mary and that beheld what he did put faith in him . . . Accordingly the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus out of the memorial tomb and raised him up from the dead kept bearing witness.” (John 11:45; 12:17) They had seen the miracle for themselves, and they believed and testified to its actuality. Jesus’ religious opposers must also have believed the event, for the record tells us that the chief priests and the Pharisees plotted to kill Jesus “because this man performs many signs.”—John 11:30-53.
Where had Lazarus gone during the four days he was dead? Nowhere. He was unconscious, asleep in the tomb awaiting a resurrection. Jesus blessed him by miraculously raising him from the dead. But according to John’s account, Lazarus said nothing about having been in heaven, hell, or purgatory during those four days. Why not? Simply because he had no immortal soul that could journey to such places.—Job 36:14; Ezekiel 18:4.
Therefore, when Jesus spoke of everlasting life, he was referring to such life either in the heavens as a transformed immortal spirit coruler with him in his Kingdom, or he was referring to life everlasting as a human on a paradise earth under that Kingdom rulership. (Luke 23:43; John 17:3) According to God’s promise, his figurative dwelling with obedient mankind on earth will bring abundant blessings to the earth. All of this, of course, depends on whether Jesus was really sent and approved by God.—Luke 22:28-30; Titus 1:1, 2; Revelation 21:1-4.
God’s Approval—Reality, Not Myth
How do we know that Jesus had God’s approval? In the first place, when Jesus was baptized, a voice out of heaven was heard saying: “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved.” (Matthew 3:17) Later, confirmation of this approval was given before other witnesses. The disciples Peter, James, and John, formerly fishermen from Galilee, accompanied Jesus to a high mountain (probably Mount Hermon, which rises to 9,232 feet [2,814 m]). There something remarkable took place before their eyes: “And [Jesus] was transfigured before them, and his face shone as the sun, and his outer garments became brilliant as the light. And, look! there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, conversing with him. . . . Look! a bright cloud overshadowed them, and, look! a voice out of the cloud, saying: ‘This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved; listen to him.’ At hearing this the disciples fell upon their faces and became very much afraid.”—Matthew 17:1-6; Luke 9:28-36.
This audible and visible confirmation from God served to strengthen Peter’s faith enormously, for he later wrote: “No, it was not by following artfully contrived false stories [Greek: my´thois, myths] that we acquainted you with the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it was by having become eyewitnesses of his magnificence. For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when words such as these were borne to him by the magnificent glory: ‘This is my son, my beloved, whom I myself have approved.’ Yes, these words we heard borne from heaven while we were with him in the holy mountain.” (2 Peter 1:16-18) The Jewish disciples Peter, James, and John actually saw the miracle of the transfiguration of Jesus and heard God’s voice of approval out of the heavens. Their faith was based on a reality they had seen and heard, not on mythology or on “Jewish fables.” —Matthew 17:9; Titus 1:13, 14.
Jesus’ Death and Another Miracle
In the year 33 C.E., Jesus was arrested and put on trial by the Jewish religious authorities, falsely accused of blasphemy for calling himself the Son of God. (Matthew 26:3, 4, 59-67) Since those Jews did not have the legal authority to put him to death, they sent him to the Roman rulers and again accused him falsely, this time of forbidding payment of taxes to Caesar and of saying that he himself was a king.—Mark 12:14-17; Luke 23:1-11; John 18:28-31.
After Jesus had been passed from one ruler to another, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, on the insistence of the religiously inspired mob, took the line of least resistance and sentenced Jesus to death. As a consequence, Jesus died in disgrace on a stake, and his body was placed in a tomb. But within three days an event took place that transformed the disconsolate disciples of Jesus into joyful believers and zealous evangelizers.—John 19:16-22; Galatians 3:13.
The religious leaders, suspecting that Jesus’ followers would resort to trickery, went to Pilate with a request: “‘Sir, we have called to mind that that impostor said while yet alive, “After three days I am to be raised up.” Therefore command the grave to be made secure until the third day, that his disciples may never come and steal him and say to the people, “He was raised up from the dead!” and this last imposture will be worse than the first.’ Pilate said to them: ‘You have a guard. Go make it as secure as you know how.’ So they went and made the grave secure by sealing the stone and having the guard.” (Matthew 27:62-66) How secure did it prove to be?
On the third day after Jesus’ death, three women went to the tomb to grease the body with perfumed oil. What did they find? “And very early on the first day of the week they came to the memorial tomb, when the sun had risen. And they were saying one to another: ‘Who will roll the stone away from the door of the memorial tomb for us?’ But when they looked up, they beheld that the stone had been rolled away, although it was very large. When they entered into the memorial tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side clothed in a white robe, and they were stunned. He said to them: ‘Stop being stunned. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was impaled. He was raised up, he is not here. See! The place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, “He is going ahead of you into Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”’” (Mark 16:1-7; Luke 24:1-12) In spite of the religious leaders’ special guard, Jesus had been resurrected by his Father. Is that a myth or a historical fact?
About 22 years after this event, Paul, a former persecutor of Christians, wrote and explained how he came to believe that Christ had been resurrected: “For I handed on to you, among the first things, that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, yes, that he has been raised up the third day according to the Scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that he appeared to upward of five hundred brothers at one time, the most of whom remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep in death. After that he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-7) Yes, Paul had a factual basis for risking his life in the cause of the resurrected Jesus, and it included the testimony of some 500 eyewitnesses who had seen the resurrected Jesus in person! (Romans 1:1-4) Paul knew Jesus had been resurrected, and he had an even more powerful reason for saying so, as he further explained: “But last of all he appeared also to me as if to one born prematurely.”—1 Corinthians 15:8, 9; Acts 9:1-19.
The early Christians were willing to die as martyrs in the Roman arenas. Why? Because they knew that their faith was based on historical realities, not on myths. It was a reality that Jesus was the Christ, or the Messiah, promised in prophecy and that he had been sent to the earth by God, had received God’s approval, had died on a stake as God’s integrity-keeping Son, and had been resurrected from the dead.—1 Peter 1:3, 4.
We recommend that you read the whole of that chapter 15 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians to understand what Paul believed about the resurrection and why it is essential to the Christian faith. The essence of his message is expressed in these words: “However, now Christ has been raised up from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep in death. For since death is through a man [Adam], resurrection of the dead is also through a man. For just as in Adam all are dying, so also in the Christ all will be made alive.”—1 Corinthians 15:20-22.
The resurrection of Christ Jesus thus has a purpose that will eventually benefit all mankind. It also opened the way for Jesus eventually to fulfill the rest of the Messianic prophecies. His righteous rulership from the invisible heavens must soon extend to a cleansed earth. Then there will be what the Bible describes as “a new heaven and a new earth” in which God “will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.”—Revelation 21:1-4.
Apostasy and Persecution Expected
Shortly after Jesus’ death and resurrection, another miracle took place that gave strength and momentum to the preaching by those early Christians. On the day of Pentecost of the year 33 C.E., God poured out from heaven his holy spirit, or active force, upon some 120 Christians met together in Jerusalem. The result? “And tongues as if of fire became visible to them and were distributed about, and one sat upon each one of them, and they all became filled with holy spirit and started to speak with different tongues, just as the spirit was granting them to make utterance.” (Acts 2:3, 4) The foreign-language-speaking Jews who were in Jerusalem at that time were astonished to hear those supposedly ignorant Galilean Jews speaking in foreign tongues. The result was that many believed. The Christian message spread like wildfire as these new Jewish believers returned to their homelands.—Acts 2:5-21.
But storm clouds soon gathered. The Romans became apprehensive of this new and apparently atheistic religion that had no idols. Starting with Emperor Nero, they brought down terrible persecution upon the Christians in the first three centuries of our Common Era. Many Christians were condemned to die in the coliseums, to satisfy the sadistic bloodlust of the emperors and the mobs who flocked to see prisoners being thrown to wild beasts.
Another disturbing factor in those early days was something that the apostles had prophesied. For example, Peter stated: “However, there also came to be false prophets among the people, as there will also be false teachers among you. These very ones will quietly bring in destructive sects and will disown even the owner that bought them, bringing speedy destruction upon themselves.” (2 Peter 2:1-3) Apostasy! That was a falling away from true worship, a compromising with the current religious trends of the Roman world, which was saturated with Greek philosophy and thought. How did it come about? Our next chapter will answer that and related questions.—Acts 20:30; 2 Timothy 2:16-18; 2 Thessalonians 2:3.
[Footnotes]
By “Christendom” we refer to the realm of sectarian activity dominated by religions that claim to be Christian. “Christianity” refers to the original form of worship and access to God taught by Jesus Christ.

The Bible teaching of the ransom and its importance will be clarified in Chapter 15.
The expression “immortal soul” appears nowhere in the Bible. The Greek word translated “immortal” and “immortality” appears only three times and refers to a new spirit body that is put on or acquired, not something inherent. It applies to Christ and to anointed Christians, who become corulers with him in his heavenly Kingdom.—1 Corinthians 15:53, 54; 1 Timothy 6:16; Romans 8:17; Ephesians 3:6; Revelation 7:4; 14:1-5.
For a more detailed consideration of this Kingdom rulership, see Chapter 15
Roman biographer Suetonius (c. 69-140 C.E.) recorded that during Nero’s reign, “punishments were . . . inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief.”


Was Jesus a Myth?
“Is the life story of the founder of Christianity the product of human sorrow, imagination, and hope—a myth comparable to the legends of Krishna, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus, and Mithras?” asks historian Will Durant. He answers that in the first century, to deny that Christ had ever existed “seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity.”—The Story of Civilization,: Part III, “Caesar and Christ.”
The Roman historian Suetonius (c. 69-140 C.E.), in his history The Twelve Caesars, stated regarding the emperor Claudius: “Because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus [Christ], he expelled them from the city.” This occurred about the year 52 C.E. (Compare Acts 18:1, 2.) Note that Suetonius expresses no doubt about the existence of Christ. On this factual basis and in spite of life-endangering persecution, early Christians were very active proclaiming their faith. It is hardly likely that they would have risked their lives on the basis of a myth. Jesus’ death and resurrection had taken place in their lifetime, and some of them had been eyewitnesses to those events.
Historian Durant draws the conclusion: “That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.”

Who Wrote the Bible?
The Christian Bible consists of the 39 books of the Hebrew Scriptures ), called by many the Old Testament, and the 27 books of the Christian Greek Scriptures, often called the New Testament. Thus, the Bible is a miniature library of 66 books written by some 40 men in the course of 1,600 years of history (from 1513 B.C.E. to 98 C.E.).
The Greek Scriptures include four Gospels, or accounts of the life of Jesus and the good news that he preached. Two of these were written by immediate followers of Christ, Matthew, a tax collector, and John, a fisherman. The other two were written by the early believers Mark and Luke, the physician. (Colossians 4:14) The Gospels are followed by the Acts of Apostles, an account of the early Christian missionary activity compiled by Luke. Next are 14 letters from the apostle Paul to various individual Christians and congregations, followed by letters from James, Peter, John, and Jude. The final book is Revelation, written by John.
That so many persons of diverse backgrounds and living in different times and cultures could produce such a harmonious book is strong proof that the Bible is not simply the product of human intelligence but is inspired by God. The Bible itself states: “All Scripture is inspired of God [literally, “God-breathed”] and beneficial for teaching.” Thus, the Scriptures were written under the influence of God’s holy spirit, or active force.—2 Timothy 3:16, 17, Int.

[Footnotes]
The Catholic Bible includes some additional books that form the Apocrypha and that are not viewed as canonical by Jews and Protestants.



Jesus and the Name of God
When teaching his disciples how to pray, Jesus said: “You must pray, then, this way: ‘Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth.’”—Matthew 6:9, 10.
Jesus knew the vital significance of his Father’s name and gave emphasis to it. Thus, to his religious enemies, he said: “I have come in the name of my Father, but you do not receive me; if someone else arrived in his own name, you would receive that one. . . . I told you, and yet you do not believe. The works that I am doing in the name of my Father, these bear witness about me.”—John 5:43; 10:25; Mark 12:29, 30.
In prayer to his Father, Jesus said: “‘Father, glorify your name.’ Therefore a voice came out of heaven: ‘I both glorified it and will glorify it again.’”
On a later occasion, Jesus prayed: “I have made your name manifest to the men you gave me out of the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have observed your word. And I have made your name known to them and will make it known, in order that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in union with them.”—John 12:28; 17:6, 26.
As a Jew, Jesus had to be conversant with his Father’s name, Jehovah, or Yahweh, for he knew the scripture that says: “‘You are my witnesses,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘even my servant whom I have chosen, in order that you may know and have faith in me, and that you may understand that I am the same One. Before me there was no God formed, and after me there continued to be none. . . . So you are my witnesses,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘and I am God.’”—Isaiah 43:10, 12.
Therefore, the Jews as a nation were chosen to be Jehovah’s witnesses. As a Jew, Jesus was also a witness of Jehovah.—Revelation 3:14.
Apparently by the first century, most Jews were no longer pronouncing God’s revealed name. However, there are manuscripts that prove that early Christians using the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures could have seen the Hebrew Tetragrammaton used in the Greek text. As George Howard, a professor of religion and Hebrew stated: “When the Septuagint which the New Testament church used and quoted contained the Hebrew form of the divine name, the New Testament writers no doubt included the Tetragrammaton in their quotations. But when the Hebrew form for the divine name was [later] eliminated in favor of Greek substitutes in the Septuagint, it was eliminated also from the New Testament quotations of the Septuagint.”
Therefore, Professor Howard reasons that first-century Christians must have clearly understood texts such as Matthew 22:44, where Jesus quoted the Hebrew Scriptures to his enemies. Howard says, “The first century church probably read, ‘YHWH said to my Lord’” instead of the later version, “‘The Lord said to my Lord,’ . . . which is as ambiguous as it is imprecise.”—Psalm 110:1.
That Jesus used the divine name is attested to by the Jewish accusation centuries after his death that if he performed miracles, it was “only because he had made himself master of the ‘secret’ name of God.”—The Book of Jewish Knowledge.
Jesus certainly knew God’s unique name. In spite of Jewish tradition at that time, Jesus would surely have used the name. He did not allow the traditions of men to overrule the law of God.—Mark 7:9-13; John 1:1-3, 18; Colossians 1:15, 16.