"And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and three-score days.    

 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

And prevailed not; neither was there place found any more in heaven.

And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world:

he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."

Montreal C., Sicily 1174

 The Council of Nicaea in

325 supposedly settled

once and for all that Jesus

was Very God, and

texts used to "prove" He

was Creator of the heav-

ens and the earth.

 The picture on the left,

shown on pg. 50 of the

December 1999 LIFE

magazine shows Jesus as

the Creator-God...Middle

circle 1st day, right 2d day,

left 3d day, large..heavens!

 If Jesus was, indeed, Very God, as the Council of Nicaea

decided, under Constantine's prodding, then Mary, His

mother, must be the Mother of God..established by the

Council of Ephesus in 431, a century later....This picture of

The Coronation of the Virgin is by Valazquez,c.1644

 The picture on the left is shown on page 56 of Dec.1999 LIFE magazine as 

The Donation of Constantine, 

and was painted in the Church of Santitissimi Quattro Coronati, Rome, in 1246.... No explanation.

 I searched for an explanation of whatever it is that Constantine is "donating" to the Church officials in the above picture in LIFE's text and didn't find it...perhaps it was edited out due to space requirements....However, we will here remedy this omission, since a picture seen by millions should, it seems, be properly explained!

....The "Donation of Constantine" supplied a historical need for the Church at a timewhen it was attempting to "prove" a theoretical basis of legal continuity to thepeople and rulers of the Middle Ages....In short, that only one Church, the Roman Catholic Church had existed with the authority of the Roman Emporer Constantine.

The document shown in the picture appeared about the ninth century, and was supposedly given by Constantine the Great to Pope Sylvester I....By the 11th century it was used powerfully by the Church, but as a forgery it was poorly done, and scholars by the time of Martin Luther were picking it to pieces, and the Churchlater abandoned all pretense of defending it as genuine...It is now generally conceded it was forged around 752 to 778, about 4 centuries after Constantine.

.....The initial success of this forgery encouraged others, perhaps the best-known being the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, which were, in reality, fictitious letters ascribed to early popes from Clement (AD 100) to Gregory the Great (AD 600).

.....LIFE has not attempted to "cover up" other Church failings, so I think space was the concern here....EG: in LIFE we read: "The Crusades were concerned with political might as much as with religion. ..The Inquisitions amounted to widespread Church-sponsored terrorism and murder. ..Over the centuries, Catholicism would do battle with Henry VIII and Napoleon. ..It would weather assassination of popes and assassination ordered by popes (Leo X had Alfonso Cardinal Petrucci strangled with a rope of crimson silk in the 16th century). ..It would survive sea changes in theology and dogma (consider: Pope Callistus I, on the throne from 217 to 222 and today a saint, held liberal attitudes toward celibacy and abortion).".... LIFE, 12-99..pg. 56

 Of the 12 pages of LIFE's Millennium article on

 Christianity,

 2 pages (18+%) are devoted to the Inquisition.

LIFE mentions that 2000 people were killed in the Spanish Inquisition on page 59, but limits this to the "Torquemada" Inquisition of about 1453...

If you look closely you'll discover that Pope Gregory IX started the "first" Inquisition in 1232,more than 200 years before Torquemada..."papal inquisitors hold secret trials and tortures; burning at the stake is the capital punishment."...

Martin Luther, Joan of Arc, and Nostradamus all suffered at one time or another from the Inquisition..Galilio spent the remainder of his life in prison after having recanted what he knew to be Scientific truth...Pope John Paul II in 1979 declared that the church may have erred in its handling of the Galileo case (300 years previously), and in 1992, actually confirmed that the Church made a mistake...Joan of Arc was made a saint many centuries after being burned at the stake, perhaps because the French more or less demanded the Church reconsider her "heresy".

.....Ian Wilson, in Jesus: the Evidence, is much less inclined to "limit" the Inquisition in the manner Life seems to, but then, he lives in a country in which Catholic terrorism of a more political kind is likely to strike at any time, and does, every now and then....Wilson starts the Inquisition, or something very much like it, with Constantine the Great, who wrote in a letter preserved in Eusebius' Life of Constantine, "Understand now by this present statute, Novations, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulinians, you who are called Cataphrygians...with what tissue of lies and vanities, with what destructive and venomous errors, your doctrines are inextricably woven! We give you warning...Let none of you presume, from this time forward, to meet in congregations...To prevent this, we command that you be deprived of all the houses in which you have been accustomed to meet ... and that these should be handed over immediately to the catholic [i.e. universal] church."

.....On page 180, 181 of Jesus: the Evidence, Ian Wilson writes: "Today, in the wake of Vatican II and with a Pope as charismatic as John Paul II, it might appear that we live in more liberal and enlightened times...But appearances can be deceptive, as demonstrated by the case of Edward Schillebeecks....a mild- mannered scholarly Belgian Catholic....he has merely suggested that the nature of the divinity invested in Jesus at Nicaea has perhaps been over-stressed at the expense of his Jewish humanity....On Saturday, 15 December 1979, Schillebeeckx was summoned to appear before Rome's Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, the Vatican department which in 1633 put Galileo on trial for arguing that the earth revolved around the sun...

.In a separate part of the same building Cardinal Franjo Seper, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, signed a declaration ending the career of the Roman Catholic Hans Kung for having questioned the idea of papal infallibility...

Of such present-day auto-da-fes the most recent, [as Wilson writes this in 1984] and perhaps the most ironic, has been that of Archbishop Emmanuel Millingo, from Lusaka, Zambia, in March 1983...Archbishop Millingo's crime?....Conducting demonstrably successful healings and exorcisms, just like those maligned Gnostics - and the founder of his faith two thousand years ago...

Dealing with mashawe, the African word for mental stress, was reported to be the Archbishop's specialty....Regrettably, in July 1983, Millingo was obliged to resign."

 Of the many "Reformers" who tried to reform their Church, many lost their lives, not just their jobs and reputations, like the modern Shillebeekx, Kung, Millingo.. But not 

Martin Luther, of Germany [left].

Luther was first to really strike a blow for freedom of Religion.

In 1533-34 King Henry VIII denied the pope's authority

over England, married Anne Boleyn; and founded the

Church of England..In 1534 Ignatius Loyola founded the

Jesuits, and from 1545-1563 the Council of Trent, pict-

ured on the right, was held to counter the Reformation.

 Today, over 440 years later, there are 20,000 sects in the estimated 2 Billion peo-

ple who call themselves Christians, and Constantine's dream of UNITY, [and Pope

John Paul's of "Jubilee 2000"], seems as elusive as it always has been.

 How about Constantine the Great's other project.....

To see all Christians worshipping on Sunday, the "Venerable Day of the Sun"?

Of course, some of this lack of success may be due to the fact that in spite of the Inquisition, Hitler's best efforts to eradicate them, and modern Arab efforts to do the same, at least in the Middle East, there are still Jews, who can't be pursuaded to turn their backs completely on Moses and the Ten Commandments.

 This thatch-roofed Ethiopian Coptic church in Ethiopia is oneof many which for 17 centuries kept the holy day of the 4th commandment..De Moribus, "Migne Patrologia Latina, 17

 The ruins of Al-Bab are considered to be one of the most representative of the "Silent Cities"of Northern Syria...In the first century full of a wealthy class of Sabbatarian Christians.

 One of a few remaining Syrian Christian Jacobite monasteries in Southern Turkey...Some Jacobite monasteries were preserving the 7th-day Sabbath as late as the 18th century.

Cathedral of Echmiadzin, religious capital of Armenia, built in AD 301, center of the Soviet Armenian Church for 1700 yrs. As a modern adaptation, it has services both Sabbath and Sunday.

The Church on the left is an Armenian Sabbath- keeping church in Cochin, India, not far from where the Apostle Thomas worked in the first century. Right: St. James Church, Jerusalem, Isr.

 Although Russia adopted orthodox Christianity in the 10th century, the 7th day Sabbath was still recognized in central Europe and parts of Russia as late as the 15th century...Later the Subotnik (Sabbath keepers) fled persecution to the Crimea and the Caucasus, some still keep Sabbath.

 Jacobite St. Thomas Church, Cochin, India.. Syrian, Armenian and Abyssinian missions were here.... They preserved the 7th day Sabbath until the arrival of the Portuguese Inquisitors at Goa in the 16th Century.

 The upper portion of the Nestorian stone (Hsian Monument) discovered by Jesuit missionaries in 1625 AD in Shensi, China.."A monument commemorating the propagation of the Ta-Chin luminous religion (Christianity) in the middle kingdom.

On the Hsian Monument, the day of the stone's erection was called "ta vao shen wan ji," meaning "the great first of the Sabbath day"...The use of Jewish terms for the days of the week in the heart of China indicates the powerful influence of the Nestorian Church in Asia. ...When China outlawed Christianity in the ninth century, many Nestorian Christians found refuge with the Buddhists, enriching that culture with their Christian heritage...The Jesuits infiltrated the Chinese courts in the 17th century...many believe they destroyed records of competing Christian sects.

.....In the port of Sakoshi in southern Japan, traces of an early Christian community were found, including an old Syrian well...A Japanese saint, Kobo Daishi, was so impressed with Nestorian Christianity he incorporated some of its tenets into his esoteric Buddhism, forming the new Shingon sect.

 Clonmacnoise was one of the missionary schools of Columba in Ireland...In the 6th century, Columba and his monks followed the Bible as their sole authority and observed the seventh day as the Sabbath.

 Iona Abbey on the right is a reconstruction of a 12th century Benedictine abbey, built on the spot of the old monastic school established by the missionary Columba in Scotland in 536 AD. .This school functioned for 600 years, sending missionaries to all Britain and Europe.

 Even the "woman" part of Rev.12:15-17 can be taken literally!

It was a Seventh-day Baptist woman, RachelPreston, who talked a Millerite preacher, Joseph Bates into keeping the 7th day Sabbath in the mid-1800's.

He told another woman Ellen Harmon White to look closer at her Bible...and not much later Seventh-day Adventism made its debut!