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 Const-

antine, 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 time

when it was attempting to "prove" a theoretical basis of legal continuity to the

people 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 Church

later abandoned all pretense of defending it as genuine...It is now generally conced-

ed 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 weath-

er 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 Christ-

ianity, 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 decept-

ive, 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 summon-

ed 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"?

 This thatchroofed Ethiopian Coptic church in Ethiopia is one

of 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 SyrianChristian 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, Armen-

ian 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 mis-

sionaries 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 incorperated 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!

 Now, although Notre Dame is just down the road a ways from Andrews Univers-

ity, and Adventist students can be talked into quieting down about "beasts" and

"dragons" and that old Seventh-day Sabbath, for the sake of "Unity" for the year

of Jubilee, still, 10 1/2 million Seventh-day Sabbath keeping Christians in just this

one group alone is probably not what the "divine" Constantine and all his fellow

"saints" had in mind, wherever he might be spending his time these days!