Church History Conference Part 2 – Early Church vs Modern Christianity: The Constantine Turning Point

You know most of this information is new, most of it is in German and French, and it’s not even being published in journals. You’ll find it in maybe five or ten books total. Don’t waste your money buying them. Just get Ante Pacem. Spend your 20 bucks or 30 bucks if you have to buy it yourself. And read it and go easy on…you know, everybody who writes a book has got one screwball idea that he’s propagating. Absolutely everybody…except me.

I’ll go ahead and tell you, and then we’ll quit. He gets in here on something called the special dead and the meal of the dead. I called him up and asked him about this. He and one other man are the only two people in the world who believe this. They’re trying to propagate this doctrine based on their interpretation of the words diamond, demon, and death. The words demon, diamond, and death all come from the same root. He’s so far out to lunch, and the reason he’s so far out to lunch is that so many Christian meetings were in cemeteries. He felt there had to be some relationship, and he built this whole explanation.

He ought to come to my town, where we were outlawed from meeting, and where we had no place we could meet legally. We never met anywhere for over two or three weeks, and the police came and told us to go somewhere else. We met anywhere we could: in cemeteries, in parks, out, on the ocean side, and a couple of times in the ocean. We met in garages, we met in living rooms and bedrooms, wherever we could find a place to meet. Those brothers and sisters were taking full advantage of these beautiful, long, manicured cemeteries, and this guy needs to go to Rome and visit some of the beautiful, well-preserved cemeteries around the catacombs. Yes, brother.

Audience: A moment ago, you made a comment about your view of church buildings. Can you elaborate on that?

I wish every church building on earth would burn down. (laughter) Oh, I don’t find any problem whatsoever with Christians having to go out and buy a building to meet in because we just did that last week. But to make it look like something…to call it a church, to make it look like a church building, is really asking for trouble. I don’t know if anybody is doing that. We’re going to take the building we’ve got. We’re going to make the biggest living room in Portland, Maine. We’ll make that thing into one big beautiful comfortable living room, and we’re going to meet in it.

By the way, don’t miss tomorrow. Let me advertise here for a minute. I’m going to tell you where all of our Protestant…I’m not going to pick on the Catholics… I’m going to tell you where all of our Protestant traditions and practices came from. And I hope it makes you wiggle. But do me a favor, will you? Don’t go home and start a war. You’re just an ugly person if you go do that. I’m speaking to you individually to help you open up to the world around you right now and the influences at play.

I am not doing anything radical to the Christian faith. I’m doing something radical to your practices and the way you think about the Christian practice of getting together, meeting, and so on. One other thing I will close on: you may not know this. I know I look 120, but Stephen is actually older than I am. And you’re not going to believe this, and you’re really going to think I’m joking, but Lance is older than us. I think Lance is two months older than I am, and he has learned so much in those two months, it’s just incredible. And if I ever say anything that in any way contradicts these brothers, be sure I am young Elihu, who does not know what he is talking about, and believe those brothers.

I am seeking to give you grounds. I guess the truth of the matter is that my heart is with those of you under 30 who will get to pick up this torch one of these days. I want you, first of all, to know you have a right to be here. An unapologetic right to be here. And secondly, we have a lot of territory that still needs to be taken. We haven’t taken it all. You have plenty of room, brother, to take, and you have plenty of liberty to take it in. I suppose that more than anyone else, I am addressing you folks. Now, to you two or three old pickle-sucking troublemakers back there who are going to go home and say, “Gene said that we should burn down all the church buildings…” No, you need to see a good Christian counselor and get your hostility checked. I gave the quote about the Lord being the one who came and delivered us, and at the same time gave us the agency of the church for that deliverance from the society and the structure around us.

How many of you are Christian workers? You’re pastors, ministers, Christian workers. You know it. There’s no question about it. May I see your hand? I’d like to know how many there are among us. There’s one, two, three, four, five, six. There are two down here. I know at least seven, eight, nine. We got a lady back there. Ten. At the end of the meeting, I’d like to speak with you first before the mob sets in. I know people are so curious about anything they can get their hands on at a conference. I’d like for you to pick one of these up. I’ll tell you what it is a little later, at the end of the meeting. After you’ve gotten it, the rest of you can fight over what’s left.

This afternoon, I titled this “Our Christian Practices Aren’t.” I think the best way to do this is to begin with Constantine’s arrival in Rome. Someone said today they didn’t even know who he was. So, I’ll tell the story and get into our Christian practices from that. I do want you to know that I have been working on this message for…at least since I was 17 years old. I have spent my life, or a little part of it, rummaging through old books trying to find lots of things, but perhaps one of my greatest interests is: where do we get all this stuff we do? At what point in time in history did it really, truly begin? And today will be the very first time that I put all of this into one message. It should prove to be interesting. There’s one little lady out here today who will walk out and say, “Well, if those things are where all those things came from, then probably there’s no Santa Claus.” And go out of here with all sorts of doubts about whatever. I would not profess myself to be a scholar, but brothers and sisters, I think I know where the faith once delivered came from. These are pretty much our Protestant Christian traditions. This is pretty much the story of where we got most of our trappings. There are a few others I consider most of them insignificant.

The story begins with a battle in 313 between Constantine and his alien invading army, who came in against a man he considered a usurper of the throne in the city of Rome. They fought around a bridge, and Constantine won. The very next day, Constantine issued a decree that Christians would no longer be persecuted. For a time, he shared the control of the Roman Empire with another gentleman who had the eastern section. He gained full power around 323-324 AD. In between was the Edict of Milan, or Milano, in which Christians were allowed total and absolute freedom, and the Christian religion was officially made one of the many religions recognized by the department of religion within the many departments of the Roman Empire. I guess you would call it the Department of State.

What happened, beginning in the year 323 to the year 327, ought to be in a book about that big. Those five years are incredible. I cannot imagine any five years in all of human history that have so much stuffed into them, and they were the turning point. I would say they were the years that decided and took away our simplicity in Christ and began giving us something wholly new, a hybrid, and I will try to explain that.