It’s not a secret: Jews were the first to persecute Christians. It started with the Crucifixion, and reached an early crescendo with Paul. He was a member of the Sanhedrin staff willing to get his hands dirty. At first the persecution waxed and waned based on whether someone was willing to follow that example. However, once anyone was turned over to authorities, the Sanhedrin wasted no time making an example of everyone who followed Christ.
The pattern was set with the Crucifixion, in which the Jewish leadership sought to convince Roman officials that Christianity was a threat to imperial order. Pilate knew right away that he had been manipulated into senseless oppression of a harmless teacher of faith. The success of Jewish leadership was uneven, but the persecution waxed and waned for the next two-and-a-half centuries. Jewish leadership worked hard to provoke Roman government to suppress Christian teaching. Under Emperor Diocletian, things got really bad.
But the Roman government began to suffer its own instability. For a brief time during this severe persecution of Christians, the imperial authority was divided. Galerius signed an edict that tolerated Christian religion. Upon the heels of that, the two primary contenders for the imperial throne both signed another edict for religious freedom in general. Eventually Constantine won a shaky control over the imperial throne. His motives are not recorded, but his actions seem to indicate he thought the Christian religion would be the best tool for unifying his control over the Roman government.
By this time, church leaders had passed through several controversies and there was serious disunity across the empire. Constantine didn’t appear to care either way which theology won, so long as there was only one that was promoted, so he sponsored scholarly work and conferences to get things in good political order among the church leaders. For their own part, church leaders were quick to seize upon the political opportunity brought by the sudden relief from persecution.
For once, the government was taking them seriously. It would naturally follow that society at large would take them seriously, as well. This became the single greatest threat to faith ever since then. Church leadership through the centuries have always assumed it was a necessity to hold leverage over government and society.
This is easily the single greatest factor in corrupting the teaching and organization of churches. With the dire need to be taken seriously, teaching and practice must pass muster with human reason. This was already a bit of a problem less than a century after the Ascension. The heavy influx of Hellenized minds swamped the early apostolic Hebraic teaching. The Christian religion was highly Hellenized as early as the second generation of apostles. The Bar Kochba revolt only confirmed this trend by alienating Hebrew Christians from Gentiles. The leadership of the revolt threatened the lives of Jews who refused to renounce Christ.
A strong Hebrew influence left the churches. Yes, there was still mixing in some areas of the Roman Empire, but the break was noticeable in the writings of the Early Church Fathers. The Hebrew mystical outlook of Christ and His disciples was exchanged for a rational outlook that twisted the teachings of church leaders. This is where all the debates came from, in that the scholars of Christian faith kept asking impertinent rational questions that would have never occurred to a Hebrew mind.
This incessant demand to define and delineate the means and mechanisms of God has crippled the call for believers to build a spiritual kingdom of hearts. Instead, Christian religion was reduced to one more political ideology. Since then, it’s been ripe for devilish dilution and manipulation.
The modern State of Israel is carrying on their tradition of suppressing Christian faith by afflicting their demands on churches today. Let me recommend that you read FARA Docs: Israel is Spying On Millions Of Christian Americans In Their Churches from MintPress News. Not that I’m a fan of their site, but sometimes MintPress has a good angle on things. At the bottom of the article, the author names all the churches subject to Israeli espionage against Christians. The Israeli government is spending millions on an influence operation to turn Christians in their favor, a favor Israel forfeited by her naked brutality against every neighbor they have.
Tactics have changed, but the Judaizers are still trying to destroy churches. As long as Christians assume they must be taken seriously by the surrounding society, they will present themselves for the Devil’s approval. Jesus warned the world would hate us if we stuck too close to Him.
