Antipas - What can we learn from his name?

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The churches of the first church age were run by elders

The third church has some unusual names.

Nicolaitans.

Balaam.

Pergamos.

Antipas.

These names are a preview to the awful name Jezebel (painted face woman) in the 4^th church age.

Jezebel represents the Catholic church spirit that dominated the Dark Age in Europe between AD 606, when the Pope was declared the Universal Bishop over all churches, and 1520 when the brave German priest Martin Luther finally broke down much of the Pope’s dominance.

What do the 7 candlesticks or 7 churches represent?

There was a seven-branched candlestick in the Old Testament Jewish Tabernacle.

The dominant candlestick is the central one.

This represents the first church age of Ephesus.

The Holy Spirit ignited the early church on the Day of Pentecost in the upper room in the year AD 33.

REVELATION 1:13    And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.

REVELATION 1:17    And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.

The great prophet and apostle John fell down. There is no man who can stand in the presence of Jesus. Thus no man can stand in the place of Jesus.

The apostles then wrote the New Testament and established each local church to be run by a group of local elders.

ACTS 20:17   And from Miletus he [the apostle Paul] sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church.

Then Paul placed the leadership of the Ephesian church in the hands of the group of elders.

There was no one-man-rulership of the church.

57-0908 HEBREWS  CHAPTER  FIVE  AND  SIX.1

Show me by the Bible what's greater, in the Bible, than a local elder to a local church?

That's right, yes, sir, the sovereignty of the local church, each church in itself. Now, brotherhood, that's wonderful. All churches ought to be in a brotherhood like that, together. But the sovereignty of local church!

53-0614   EARNESTLY CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH THAT WAS  ONCE DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS

Elders is what is the head of the church, every church.

Paul called the elders of Ephesus to Miletus and gave them, as a group, authority over the local church.

ACTS 20:17    And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church.

ACTS 20:28   Take heed therefore unto yourselves,

and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

Then Paul warned of the impending danger to the church.

This was not the vicious persecutions of the pagan Roman empire from outside the church.

The real danger arose with ambitious church leaders within the church who wanted the preeminence in the church so that each church could have a one-man boss.

ACTS 20:29   For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.

The apostle John warned of this too.

III JOHN 1:9   I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not.

Diotrephes elevated himself to be the one-man church leader.

He rejected John who wrote Scripture. Thus, Diotrephes rejected the written Word in favour of his own opinions and self-importance.

III JOHN 1:10   Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words: and not content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the church.

Diotrephes promoted himself to be the boss of his church and threw out of that church anybody who disagreed with him.

With this attitude, in today’s world, he would be called the pastor of the church.

Dare to disagree with a church pastor and see how unpopular you become.

Thus the reign of error began which soon became a reign of terror that was aimed at those who dared to disagree with the one-man-church-leader.

Conformity to the errors of the church leader tuned law-abiding Jews into flaw-abiding Christians.

Denominational Christianity was born based on money collected and numbers of church-goers.

They thought they had safety in numbers but it was a mirage of "safety in blunders" as they grew more unscriptural.

In the New Testament, no one man was made the head of a local church.

But “pastor” is only mentioned once in the New Testament and thus obviously has no Bible authority to call himself the head of the church.

No man is head of the church as only Christ is the Head

EPHESIANS 5:23   For the husband is the head of the wife,

even as Christ is the head of the church:

and he is the saviour of the body.

The head is attached to the body by the spine or backbone.

The first 7 vertebrae form the neck which symbolizes the seven church ages as Christ came down to earth to indwell His people as the great Holy Spirit. Thereby He brings the church under submission to the Word of God. Jesus Christ is the Word of God.

JOHN 16:13   Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth:

The proof or evidence of the Holy Ghost baptism is a person’s ability to understand the mysteries of Scripture.

The next 12 vertebrae are connected to the ribs.

Symbolizing the return of the Gospel to the 12 tribes of Israel when the 144000 Jews accept Jesus in the 3.5 years of great Tribulation. This is symbolized by the 12 loaves of Shewbread in the Jewish Tabernacle. The Shewbread had to be eaten in the holy place by the priests. The Jews thus have to gather back in the Promised Land to meet their Messiah, Who is the Bread of Life.

Jezebel means the church leader dominates the people

Four churches are mentioned in Revelation Chapter 2.

The candlestick indicates that each church age moves further away from the central flame that the apostles started after the Holy Ghost descended on the Day of Pentecost to ignite the flame of the early church.

This is an EVIL trend, moving away from the original New Testament church.

How did this decline start?

Thanks to false human leadership, the early church slowly slid down the slippery slopes of plausible human error.

The flame of truth dimmed. The zeal to be Scriptural faded.

Four is the middle of seven.   1  2  3  4  5  6  7

So, the fourth candlestick represents the church in the Middle Age, known as the Dark Age because the people were deprived from having the Bible in their own language.

The fourth candlestick is as far as the church could move away from the original truth.

The Dark Age saw the church getting to a maximum state of corruption. It is virtually impossible for religious people to sink to a lower level than that immoral and murderous age.

The fourth church is called Thyatira. This means a dominating woman.

A woman symbolizes a church. The true church is the Bride of Christ.

The Roman Catholic church dominated Europe in the Middle Age of church history.

The Bible was banned, the truth had almost died out.

In the fourth church age, the Bible speaks of Jezebel, the evilest woman of the Old Testament.

There was no woman called Jezebel in church history.

Thus, the name Jezebel refers to a trend in the fourth church age from roughly AD 606 when Boniface III  was elected Pope and then the next year was declared to be the Universal Bishop. This dark and dangerous age ended about 1520 with Martin Luther’s brave revolt against the Catholic church.

The name Jezebel thus describes the character of the Roman church in the Dark Ages. Evil, vicious, and defying the written Scriptures. Tens of millions of dissenters were killed in turbulent waves of violence. Europe was trapped in a cage of error, terror, unbelief, and superstition.

People could buy indulgences which the Pope claimed could forgive their sins. There was no limit to the evil of the Roman church in this age.

The people are told what to do and what to believe.

The quotes of a man replaced the Scripture

What the church leader said was more important than what was written in the Bible.

People were not allowed to appeal to the Bible when the church beliefs disagreed with Scripture.

Just like today, individuals are not allowed to think for themselves.

Parroting the pastor or priest becomes the key to success.

The people who disagree with the church leader are subject to criticism, character assassination, and expulsion from the church.

Jezebel was ruthless and killed Naboth to gain his vineyard.

Church leaders are ruthless to maintain their power over the people and their hold over the church money.

Remember Judas held the money bag.

Martin Luther declared that “The just shall live by faith alone”.

Not by good works, nor by paying money, nor by following church traditions.

The Reformation was born and Protestants escaped from the deadly unbelief of the Catholic denomination. This fifth church age was called Sardis, meaning the Escaped Ones.

God was beginning to resurrect the church from the spiritual death of the Dark Ages.

EVIL was the church moving away from the first church age

LIVE is EVIL spelled backward. This represented the church moving back towards the first church age.

So, Luther got the church to move in the opposite direction, back towards the Word of God as written by the apostles in the New Testament. That had been the foundation of the first church age.

Martin Luther in Germany boldly declared the Pope to be the man of sin or antichrist spirit.

II THESSALONIANS 2:3   Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

The first church age had the truth.

But the church had to fall away from the truth first, and then be restored back to the truth again before Jesus can return.

In the Dark Age, the man of sin was exposed. From AD 904 to AD 963 the Popes were so evil that they were ruled by harlots.

The terribly corrupt Borgia Pope Alexander VI who died in 1503 inflamed the fires of the Protestant Reformation as people rebelled against his wicked ways.

The man of sin was revealed to the reformers. None other than the Pope.

II THESSALONIANS 2:4   Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.

The Popes were building St Peter's church, the biggest church in the world. They used the most famous artist who filled the Sistine chapel with nude paintings of men and women.

Sitting in St Peter’s church in the Vatican City State the Pope is idolized and uplifted to be VICARIVS CHRISTI, in place of Christ or Vicar of Christ.  But Christ is God. So the Pope sits in the place of God in St Peter’s church.

The Pope's first title is Bishop of Rome. His second title is "In place of Christ".

Indulgences were sold in the name of the Pope who claimed that if you bought them then he was able to forgive you of your sins. Only God can forgive sins.

That means that the Pope is God.

When the Pope sits on St Peter’s chair in the Lateran Palace next to the Lateran Cathedral or Basilica, then he claims that he is infallible. Only God is infallible. Claiming to be infallible makes the Pope God.

An ancient Catholic document, Extravagantes Johannes, refers to the Pope as “Our Lord God the …”

The Gloss of Extravagantes of Pope John 22 says, “But to believe that our Lord God the Pope …”

Bishop Patrick Dunn of Auckland said in 2004, “It seems that Pope John Paul II now presides over the universal church from his place upon Christ’s cross”.

This implies that the Pope was crucified for us. That would make him God.

In 1512 Christopher Marcellus said this to Pope Julius II.  “…thou art finally another God on earth”.

In 1302 Pope Boniface wrote, “Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff”.

Pope Leo 13 said, “We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty”.

But thanks to the Reformation started by Martin Luther, God was beginning to restore the church back to what it had been like in the first church age.

JOHN 12:24   Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

A seed must be buried in the ground and die and rot. Then a new life germinates out of it.

The new plant goes through different stages but eventually at the end produces the identical seeds to the seed that was planted at the beginning. When the identical seeds are produced, then the harvest occurs as the seeds are pulled off the plant. This stage represents the "rapture" when the Bride is caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

The Pagan Roman empire killed the Christians in ten vicious persecutions. This was casting the seed into the ground.

The Dark Ages were the dirt that buried the seeds so that eventually they could germinate into a new life in the Reformation. Think of a mealie seed or corn seed that germinates into leaves and a stem.

The sixth church age of Philadelphia (brotherly love) was the missionary age of the open door where the pollen of eternal Life blew from the tassels across the world.

Then the plant finally produces a seed that is identical to the seed that was sown.

That is why Jesus calls Himself the First and the Last.

The last church age must be exactly the same as the first church age that the apostles set in order.

Only when the seed in the last church age is identical to the seed in the first church age, will the harvest take place that pulls the seed off the plant to meet the Lord in the air.

The seed is the understanding of the Word of God.

Let us return to the first church age of Ephesus, meaning “Aimed At” or “Relaxed”.

When the apostles died, Christians lost their urgency. They lost the desire to stay strictly Scriptural.

They began to believe the plausible opinions of ambitious men who set out to conquer each local church and replace each ruling group of elders with a single boss.

This boss-man then promoted up those who agreed with him and threw out any who opposed him.

He took possession of the church tithes and offerings. Thus, he could pay his supporters and cut off any support for ministries that opposed him.

A one-man-head of a church was an efficient business plan to grow a church.

But in the process truth was lost.

God is never served by human ambition.

Soon the word “bishops” ceased to refer to the elders of the local assembly.

PHILIPPIANS 1:1   Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:

The city of Philippi had many bishops. They were elders.

The Scriptural accuracy of the early church faded. While men slept, ambitious leaders took over cities as “the bishop of the city”.

Even the good preachers got infected. We read of great men like Ireneaus being called the bishop of Lyons.

He in turn praised the bishop of Rome who had been elevated over all the Roman churches.

This was unheard of in New Testament days.

Nicolaitans are elevated church leaders

This comes from Nike (victory) and Laos (people or laity).

Nicolaitan means "victorious over people".

God hated the Nicolaitans.

So, the Nicolaitans had been elevated to be above the people and were thus victorious over the laity.

The Pope rose in Italy to conquer the congregation or laity.

ITALY, if you rearrange the letters, spells out LAITY.

Italy looks like a boot with a high heel.

And this is the home of the Pope who is the false prophet, as he is the prophet of false or denominational religion.

Today women are obsessed with high heels. Even though they are uncomfortable.

High heels copy the shape of the foot of Italy.

What does lifting up the heel represent?

The first prophecy in the Bible that spoke of Christ defeating Satan was the bruised HEEL of the woman’s Seed crushing the HEAD (cleverness) of the serpent’s seed.

GENESIS 3:15   And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head,

and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Christ's heel was bruised when He was lifted up on a cross.

The Gentile image seen by Nebuchadnezzar has salvation crossing over from the Jews to the Gentiles who are represented by the feet of the image. Thus, salvation enters the Gentile image at the heel. This is the crucial position where only Jesus could successfully achieve salvation for us Gentiles.

Thus, the heel represents Jesus on the cross, where He alone could save us.

But He had to be lifted up on the cross to hang between Heaven and earth as the only Door to Heaven.

JOHN 12:32   And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

Jesus alone must be uplifted, no other man.

As Martin Luther said, “It is Christ and Christ alone Who saves”.

So, a woman uplifting herself in high heels represents a church uplifting itself as the “heel of salvation” which is totally false.

No church can save anyone. No person can save anyone.

Each church today uplifts itself as the true church and uplifts its leader or pastor as a great person.

Church-goers thus huddle in their churches for safety and praise their pastors, believing that that will save them from the 3.5 years of great Tribulation.

A woman in high heels will also paint her face, to symbolize the Jezebel (painted face woman) church of the Dark Age.

When this woman then wears pants and high heels, she looks exactly like the map of Italy where the mother church Rome is.

That is where this spirit comes from.

Wearing pants means she is in authority. The dominating woman. Thyatira.

Then look at the island of Sicily. It looks just like the stone that is going to smite the image in the feet.

The doom of the church in the years of great Tribulation has been foretold.

The death of Jesus abolished the Old Testament priesthood that was elevated above the people.

The fivefold ministry is not a priesthood

A New Testament priesthood, just like the Aaronic priesthood, was falsely formed between the people and God.

The preachers loved to be more important than the people.

They wanted to be noticed and uplifted.

The third church age of Pergamos would lay the foundation for the worldwide Roman Catholic denominational church that would claim to be elevated above every other church.

And they would happily kill any opposition to achieve that exalted position.

However, every born-again Christian is a priest.

And nobody is above any priest except for the High Priest, Who is Jesus Christ.

I PETER 2:9   But ye are a chosen generation,

a royal priesthood,

an holy nation, a peculiar people;

REVELATION 1:6   And hath made us kings and priests

unto God and his Father;

Every born-again Christian is a king. Nobody is above a king except the King of kings, Jesus Christ.

This elevating of a holy man above the people, the congregation or laity, was never God’s original will.

The church is supposed to be a brotherhood.

All brothers are equal, despite having different talents and ministries.

I PETER 2:17   Honour all men. Love the brotherhood.

Fear God. Honour the king.

Elevating men finally produced a Pope who is called VICARIVS CHRISTI  (in place of Christ or the Vicar of Christ).

A man standing in the place of Christ is opposite to Bible truth which tells us that Jesus stood in our place when he was condemned and died and went down to hell. Only He could pay for our sins.

Mary got promoted to the unscriptural “mother of God” and is now falsely claimed to be a Mediator between people and God.

Catholics even pray to the dead saints as if they are intercessors.

God wanted elders to run small house churches

ROMANS 16:5   Likewise greet the church that is in their house.

COLOSSIANS 4:15   Salute the brethren which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the church which is in his house.

PHILEMON 1:2   And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in thy house:

That is why God hated this elevation of one person over the congregation.

A group of elders was the Scriptural way of stopping one-man-dominance of a church.

I PETER 5:1   The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:

Peter does not refer to his rank as an apostle in an attempt to elevate himself. But stresses his equality as an elder with the local elders.

I PETER 5:2   Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind;

:3     Neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.

The elders formed a leadership group.

"Lords over God's heritage" means regarding themselves as the boss.

The modern-day pastors have a motto, “Everyone is entitled to my opinion”.

The motto of the elders is, "Never above you, never below you, always beside you".

The 45000 different types of denominations and churches of today are the product of one pastor being the head of each church. Or worse still, a pastor and his wife. Each pastor has his own good points and bad points and his own opinions and prejudices as well as his ignorance of certain Scriptures. Hence the endless divisions amongst the different churches.

Should a woman preach?

I TIMOTHY 2:11   Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

:12     But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

But dominating women will insist on preaching. They will wear the pants. Daughters of Rome.

I CORINTHIANS 14:34   Let your women keep silence in the churches:

for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.

:35   And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

:36   What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?

:37   If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual,

let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.

Six times in the Old Testament God rebukes pastors.

JEREMIAH 23:1   Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD.

:2     Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD.

Disagree with the pastor and you are unwelcome.

People catch the spirit of the pastor. And woe to you if you disagree with the pastor.

54-0509  THE  INVASION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES

You take a little bitty girl, little bitty boy, put them out here, let them live with somebody... You take a man... I can take my boy, let him be out for a day with somebody; let me come in, I can almost tell you who he's been with. Certainly. Watch, that environment, that spirit catches him.

You go into a church, where the people all... You go into Holy Ghost churches, or Pentecostal churches, they call it. Look everybody be... Oh, they run and jerk their head back and forth, the pastor does; watch the whole church begin to do the same thing.

A pastor dominating a church is the end product of the Nicolaitans spirit.

Brother Branham had always been in favour of people going to some church.

But towards the end of his life he had second thoughts as he became aware that churches wanted to force their beliefs on people.

65-1128M  GOD'S  ONLY  PROVIDED  PLACE  OF  WORSHIP

Out there in Tucson, is listening in this morning, I once wondered...

I've always constraining people, "Go to church, no matter where you go."

And I seen the people kind of pulling back, and going this way. And I thought, "What's the matter?"

I went to some of them,

"The first day you're there, they'll approach you, 'Join our church.' If you don't do it, you're not welcome." See? See? It's a forced thing, it's forced upon you, see, and that's Babylon.

But in Christ, you come in by election; not by force, your heart pulls you in.

God did not put His name then in Babylon. Closely now.

He cannot put His Name in Babylon, the churches.

Oh, they, they put His Name in there, but He never. No.

64-0629  THE  MIGHTY  GOD  UNVEILED  BEFORE  US

...that God is calling an exodus,

to come from behind the fleshly curtain who tries to impersonate, who tries to join church;

not Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, altogether, but Pentecostal churches.

It is an individual affair. It's you and God. You have to go in, not your group, not your church, not your pastor, but it's you who has to go in.

Balaam the prophet loved money and prestige not truth

Motivated by self-gain he led the Jews to an idolatrous feast of Baal Peor.

Balaam was a false prophet who preached for-profit and destroyed thousands of Jews in the process.

The bishop of Rome sold out to the Roman emperor Constantine for much money and the beautiful Lateran Palace on the Caelian hill in Rome. Then Constantine built him the Lateran basilica (a Pope's cathedral). There are only four basilicas, all in Rome.

Thus, the Catholic church instituted a succession of Popes, each of whom was and still is a false prophet, as they deceive the people into unscriptural beliefs.

Church age 3 was a dangerous time to oppose the Popes

The Roman Catholic church began to kill its opponents.

Constantine was emperor and brutally suppressed any opposition to the Trinity doctrine that he forced on the churches at the council of Nicaea in AD 325.

Who opposed this huge church organization as it began to form?

Not many. True believers found that if they disagreed with Rome then they would be cast out of the church and exiled. Then persecution would follow. By AD 450 Pope Leo I claimed that killing heretics was acceptable. The Roman Catholic church eventually killed tens of millions of people during more than 1000 years of violence and persecution.

To gain wealth one needs a big organization that has centralized control.

When churches do a reality check today, it is always in terms of money collected and the number of church members. Those two factors are taken as the sign of God’s blessing.

The most efficient business model is to have one man in charge as the head of the denomination. The head of the system controls who preaches and can thus get everybody to be bent to his will. Opposition must be eliminated.

There are seven parables of the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew Chapter 13 that represent the seven church ages. The third parable representing the third church age of Pergamos has a small mustard seed (the small local churches that the apostles established) suddenly growing wild. Instead of being a small herb, it grows into a tree with branches. Thus, it becomes a big denominational organization that birds can lodge in. "Denomination" is an unscriptural word.

But in the first parable, the birds represented the Devil who gobbled up the seeds that fell on hard ground, representing hard hearts. Hard ground is trampled by many feet thus it is the popular opinion that is accepted by the majority.

So, the birds destroy the influence of the seeds (the Word of God) in human hearts.

Religion and big money is a toxic mixture. Ask Judas.

Ambition, women, money, and fame are the main reasons for the downfall of preachers.

The bigger the organization, the more these four stumbling blocks become available.

This causes the seed to grow wild and the plant to get bigger than what the plant should be. This unnatural growth of money and numbers of people (a host) requires the creation of artificial man-made rules to exercise control. The whole organization works best when a central dictator is raised up to be the focus of attention.

The wafer lifted up by the priest during the mass is called the "host".

This indicates that Satan functions best when he is in the majority and has a host of followers.

The Roman republic, run by a group of senators, grew even bigger when it became an Empire under the dictatorship of an emperor. The empire was split into 12 and later 14 regions, each known as a diocese that was governed and controlled by a vicar who had carefully limited authority.

The growing Catholic church copied this unscriptural pattern of political government.

Church dioceses, smaller in size than those of the Roman empire, were set up so that a bishop could control each region. This was because there were more bishops than there were Roman empire dioceses.  Church dioceses were then clustered together in groups to form archdioceses which needed an unscriptural archbishop to be in charge.

Notice how the big system is growing wild by getting out of the confines of Scripture.

Bishops and archbishops naturally took over civil and political responsibilities in their dioceses as the Roman administration began to collapse after AD 476 when the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was pensioned off by the Heruli general Odoacer.

The diocese of Rome became more and more important because Rome was the capital of the empire and had more wealth than other areas.

The bishop of Rome was then known as the Vicar of Rome.

The barbarian Goths (helped by the Huns) invaded and defeated the Romans in AD 378 and killed the Roman emperor Valens. This sent shockwaves through the Roman empire. The new emperor wanted everybody to be in subjection to the Roman Pope as he thought that this would please God. Then God would help them beat the barbarians. Thus the attacks of the vicious Huns inadvertently made the Pope more important in the eyes of the emperor.

Barbarian refugees were entering the empire and taking over areas of land.

In AD 406 the Rhine river froze and barbarians crossed over the frozen river to attack Gaul (France).  It initiated a wave of destruction of Roman cities and the collapse of Roman civic order in northern Gaul.

Landowners were scared of the barbarians seizing their land without compensation. Thus, they donated their properties to the church. The Catholic Church soon became the largest single landowner in the West. This was called the Patrimony of St Peter. These many estates, scattered throughout western Europe, required more artificial man-made rules and a church-controlled civil service organization.

The Roman church was becoming Big Business.

Cardinals were appointed to control the archbishops but were often chosen because they had the wealth to buy their position. Men had to be good at business if they were to get a Cardinal’s position.

The sheer size of all these estates was making the Roman church big in the business sense.

They had forgotten that Jesus had chased the money-makers out of the Temple of God.

The Muslims made the Roman church strong

The Muslims conquered Rome's rival churches.

When the Muslims in the 600s conquered the rival churches of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria then Rome became the leader of the western churches.

When the Muslims conquered Constantinople in 1453 then Rome became the most important and powerful church.

By that time the bishop of Rome was known as the Pope and also as the Vicar of Christ. VICARIUS CHRISTI.

The Pope takes the place of Christ so that the Pope can be elevated above all the people.

This was the rise of competitive denominational Churchianity.

Each church trying to be more important and more effective than the others.

With Rome's main rival churches eliminated by the successful Muslim armies, the Pope gained more and more prestige as the main church leader.

This is opposite to the truth where Christ takes the place of the sinner on the cross, in order to die for the sins of the sinner.

Cardinals (unscriptural word) were then put in charge of archbishops. Finally, the Pope was the ultimate head of the cardinals.

In AD 382 the Roman emperor Theodosius who had refused the pagan title of Pontifex Maximus or Pontiff (which means High Priest of the Babylonian mysteries), then passed that title of Pontiff onto his uncle Damasus, who was bishop of Rome. Damasus had twice got his thugs to kill more than one hundred people in order to make sure that he was elected bishop of Rome.

Pope Leo I (440-61) called himself the pagan high priest, Pontifex Maximus, of the Babylonian mysteries. He also claimed that as Pope he had the authority of St Peter himself.

The Babylonian mysteries opened the door to a wide range of unscriptural beliefs as pagan ceremonies and festivals were given Christian names and then were adopted by the Catholic Church.

This encouraged pagans to join the Catholic church as they were able then to continue in their pagan superstitions.

Trinity, Christmas, Easter eggs and Easter bunnies, Mother and Child worship, regeneration by baptism, Justification by works, the sacrifice of the mass, extreme unction when someone dies, purgatory, prayers for the dead, idol processions, relic worship, clothing and crowning images, the rosary, holy water, lighting wax candles, worship of the sacred heart, the sign of the cross, priests, monks, nuns, monasteries, nunneries with their mother superior, baptizing babies, and confirmation. Pagan ancestor worship resulted in Catholics praying to dead saints as intercessors and praying to Mary.

A big error was removing the name of God because they cannot find one name for three Persons. The Triune God has no name.

That is how far the Popes had strayed outside the bounds of Scripture. Having started this process, they would continue the downward slide until they killed tens of millions of dissenters in the Dark Age.

What enabled the Trinity to get such a hold on the churches?

For the 900 years of the fourth church age, the Dark Age, the Catholic Church had no opposition because the three barbarian tribes that were not Trinitarians had been destroyed.

Arius was a churchman who did not believe in the Trinity. His non-Trinitarian beliefs spread to certain of the barbarian tribes. Three Arian barbarian tribes were involved with the Pope of Rome, the Vandals, the Heruli or Scirii, and the Ostrogoths.

The Heruli under Odoacer deposed the last western Roman emperor in AD 476 and ruled Italy. The Pope hated this state of affairs as the Heruli were Arian, not Trinitarian.

The Heruli ruled Italy and the Ostrogoths were their next-door neighbours.

There was no more western Roman empire. The eastern Roman empire is shown in yellow.

The Pope wanted the elimination of 3 nonTrinity tribes

The eastern emperor of Constantinople then asked the Ostrogoths to march into Italy and eliminate the Heruli. In AD 489 Theodoric the Ostrogoth attacked and by AD 493 had eliminated Odoacer and his Heruli who then faded from history as a tribe.

But there was a problem. Theodoric and the Ostrogoths were also Arian.

But Theodoric was too powerful while he lived.

When Theodoric died, the new emperor in Constantinople, Justinian, ordered his general Belisarius to first attack the Vandals in North Africa in AD 533. A nine-month campaign saw the Vandals defeated and scattered and they also disappeared from history as a tribe. The Vandals had been an Arian tribe. So that was the second Arian tribe to be uprooted.

In AD 535 Belisarius attacked the Arian Ostrogoths in Italy. This campaign lasted almost 20 years and caused untold death and destruction in Italy. The Justinian plague from AD 541 to AD 542 devastated Europe and kept recurring to kill about 50 million people over the next two centuries. War, widespread famine, and disease killed millions. The Arian Ostrogoths disappeared from history and the huge death toll plunged Europe into the Dark Age where the Roman Pope emerged as the strongest ruler by converting the barbarians to his Trinity beliefs.

All Arian opposition to the Trinity had been wiped out when the Heruli, Vandal, and Ostrogoth tribes had been eliminated. For 900 years during the Dark Age Trinity was taught and believed. So when the Reformation started in 1520 the Protestants just assumed the Trinity was true and continued with that belief.

Ten barbarian tribes who conquered the Roman Empire played a role in uplifting the Pope to become the most powerful ruler in Europe in the Dark Age.

To achieve this, it was necessary to eliminate the three Arian tribes.

DANIEL 7:7   After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.

DANIEL 7:20   And of the ten horns that were in his head,

and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows.

The Roman empire was a beast with one head and ten horns. The ten horns represented ten barbarian tribes that helped to conquer the Roman empire but then deliberately or inadvertently helped the Pope rise to power in Europe.

The fourth beast was the vicious and cruel Roman empire. The iron teeth were linked to the iron legs of the image of Nebuchadnezzar.  Ruthless, crushing power destroyed their enemies. This Roman beast was different from the other Gentile beasts of Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece because they were just political powers that rose, ruled, and then fell, and dropped out of history. But the Roman empire collapsed and its power was then recovered by the Roman Catholic church which was just as brutal and nasty as the Roman empire. What was worse was that the Roman church totally corrupted the Bible teachings of the New Testament apostles. As a result, most Christians today happily believe unscriptural ideas that are not written in the Bible. Believing in doctrines that are not Scriptural like Trinity, Christmas and Good Friday is now regarded by the Protestants as a badge of pride.

DANIEL 7:8   I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there

were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots:

and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.

Eliminating the three Arian tribes cleared the space for the Trinity to triumph over the barbarian tribes.

The conquerors of the Roman Empire would be conquered by the Roman Pope.

Rome always conquers its conquerors.

A little horn. A little power. The Pope was rising to power and developing the Vatican City state. It is the smallest state on earth and occupies less than one square kilometer. Only 150 people have Vatican passports to live in the Vatican. About 650 other people live in different parts of the world and have dual passports, one of which is a Vatican passport. Yet this tiny group is the nerve centre that runs the wealthiest organization on earth, the worldwide Roman Catholic church.

This church organization is totally committed to the Trinity and has persuaded most of the Protestants to believe in the Trinity as well. The Trinity, Christmas, and Good Friday are three major Catholic doctrines that unite the Catholics and Protestants.

In 1913 the Oneness Pentecostal movement developed that disagreed with Trinity. These people were detested by the other churches.

Between 1947 and 1965 William Branham in America revealed a clear picture of the Spirit of God (God the Father) fully dwelling in the Man Jesus (the Son of God).

God was above the Jews as the Father, with the Jews as the Son (Emmanuel is God with us), and in the church as the Holy Spirit.

Jesus as a Man was not God. God is a Spirit, not flesh and bone. Thus, the Bible never says “God the Son”.

You are everything that is in you. Because the fulness of the Godhead dwelled bodily in Jesus, that made Him God.

COLOSSIANS 2:9  For in him [Jesus] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

“God the Father” is never mentioned in the Old Testament.

God could not become “God the Father” until He had the perfect “Son of God”, Jesus, that God could dwell in and thus express Himself.

Thus, William Branham finished the revelation of the mystery of God.

REVELATION 10:7   But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound,

the mystery of God should be finished,

as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

Famous Trinitarians admit that they do not understand the Trinity.

They cannot find one name for three Persons. So, the Triune God has no name.

They keep saying, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” but they have no clue what that name is.

Antipas means anti Papas which means Opposing the Pope

The word Pope comes from the word Papas, meaning father.

So, who was Antipas?

Anti-papas.  Anti-the Pope.

He was an unknown martyr who opposed the Pope and died a cruel death as a result.

But his name was known to God.

There is a price to be paid for opposing the church system.

Untold millions have already paid that price in the past. But God knows each name.

When a country wants to honour all their dead who died in battle, they cannot choose the grave of a known soldier. His name on the tomb means that only he will be honoured.

If all the known names of the dead are on the tomb then that is a much better idea as all the other people are also honoured.

But that still leaves the problem of all the unknown soldiers who died. They also deserve to be honoured.

So each country builds a tomb to their unknown soldier.

There is something about a man who fought and died alone that grips one's heart. No greater price can be paid.

Are we prepared to stand up for Bible truth alone when everyone opposes us. Just as Jesus stood alone in the Judgement Hall of Pontius Pilate, He preferred to suffer and die because that was the harsh path of Truth.

The unknown soldier died at his post. A harsh death for a brave man. Unknown to us, but yet he lives in our hearts as we admire him.

So Antipas bravely faced a cruel death at the hands of the Catholic church. Alone and unnoticed, he was true to his faith in Scripture. He would rather die than change a single word in the Bible.

God chose him from among many other martyrs because his name implied opposition to the Pope. That is what God is trying to tell us. We must have nothing to do with any Roman Catholic traditions.

That is why Jesus said, "Call no man your father". Call no man Papas or Pope.

MATTHEW 23:9   And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

Jesus was not referring to our natural fathers.

He did not want us to regard anybody as our spiritual father.

We are born again of the Spirit of God. This makes God our Father.

We cannot be born again by any man.

Jesus did not want us involved with this monster religious system that was growing huge in order to take over the world.

Look at the main titles of the Pope:

Vicar of Jesus Christ,  Successor of the Prince of the Apostles,  Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church,  Patriarch of the Latin Church,  Primate of Italy,  Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province,  Sovereign of the Vatican City State.

Not one of these titles is Scriptural. That is how wild the Catholic church has grown.

Look what God says to us Laodiceans:

REVELATION 3:20   Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

God is no longer in the church.

God stands outside the church of today because the King James Bible is no longer regarded as the Absolute. Verses are changed to suit different people. Much of the Bible is still not understood because Bible study is no longer emphasized.

Building doctrines on quotes and being subject to the Bible ignorance of the elevated church leaders is now accepted as being the path to truth. How sad.

God is looking for individuals, not a group, who can respond to his voice and come out of the church systems.

In the end, Jesus stood alone, as the rejected Word, in the judgement hall of Pontius Pilate.

Are we able to stand alone for Scripture?

Antipas, the unknown martyr, sets an impressive example for us.

We only suffer character assassination and rejection when we disagree with the churches.

That is much easier than being killed. So we have no excuse.

Moses taught us by his example that rebellion against the spiritual tyrant Pharaoh was actually obedience towards God.