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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman
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To Constantinian Christianity Matthew 28:19 records
our fundamental mission as Christians.
"Therefore go and
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," We should not understand
the word "nations" in this verse in terms of Canada, the United States,
New Zealand
or any modern nation. We
should understand it in terms of a people with the same cultural
background because that is the meaning of the Greek word
"ethnos" that is translated as "nations" in this
verse. Jesus, therefore,
commanded His apostles to make disciples for Himself from all ethnic
peoples. In obedience to
Jesus, Christians did just that for the first three hundred years of
Christian history. Sadly,
the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19 was corrupted and compromised in
the fourth century with the arrival of Emperor Constantine onto the
throne of the Roman Empire. To help accommodate
pagans into this new Christian empire, pagan practices were incorporated
into Christian doctrine and church structure, something that has left
its mark in today's church. The
government mandated Christianizing of the empire and the paganization of
the church destroyed the meaning of New Testament Christianity.
In short, one was a Christian because he was a Roman citizen.
It's no different from those considering themselves Christian
today because they live in what they claim to be a Christian nation.
I believe that during
the first three hundred years of church history Satan failed to kill the
Christian Movement by ten major government sponsored periods of
persecution. His failure led
him to change his focus from killing Christianity to popularizing it
through unbiblical political means.
History has proven that when Christianity becomes cool, the
church grows cold, something made clear in the Laodicean church, seen in
Revelation 3:16.
Jesus never commanded us
to make a nation His disciple. He
commanded us to make disciples of those within a nation.
He laid down His life for people, not nations.
There is no Biblical support for the present trend to
Christianize a nation through the political or legislative process.
There has only been one God-appointed theocracy, and that was the
nation of Israel, and to date, Israel
has failed to be that theocratic state.
Biblical history, from
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