The Roman church had come to be wealthy under patronage. When Constantine tried to establish the Christian system in order to use it, he gave the edict of Toleration at Milan circa 314 CE. After this, the Christians became influential. In 318 CE, the emperor paid for the travel of the family of Christ to Rome to confer with bishop Sylvester at the Lateran Palace. He was, by this time, a very wealthy person living like a prince. The party of the family of Christ came by ship to the port of Ostia and then they went by donkey to Rome. They were dressed in woollen homespun garments and leather hats and boots. They spoke Aramaic and Greek. Bishop Sylvester spoke only Latin and Greek so the conversation was carried on in Greek. It seems likely that Simon was their spokesman (see the paper The Nicolaitans (No. 202) and also the ex-Jesuit historian Malachi Martin The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, pp. 42 ff). They expressed their concern that the laws of God had been removed as the basis of the church. They wanted the Sabbath reinstated. It had been made inferior to Sunday from the Council of Elvira in 300 CE. They argued for the Torah, which was the Hebrew name given to the law of God, to be reinstated to its correct position. That included the Holy Days and food laws. They asked that the Greek bishops put into Alexandria and Antioch and elsewhere be replaced by the family of Christ. They asked also that Jerusalem again be made the centre of the faith and the money for the church be able to be sent there. They went home. Instead of using his influence with Constantine to reform the church of these Gnostic influences and restore it to the true faith once delivered to the saints, as the brother of Christ wrote (Jude 3), Sylvester set about destroying the faith and the family of Christ with it.
Posted on: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 12:14:57 +0000
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