FINAL WARNING: Setting the Stage for Destruction
punishment, God allowed them to become enslaved by other nations.When Attalus, King of Pergamos, died in 133 B.C., he bequeathed the
Babylonian priesthood to Rome. Thus, Julius Caesar became the
Supreme Pontiff of the Babylonian Order. All Roman emperors served
in this capacity until 376 A.D., when Emperor Gratian refused it, and
Damascus, a Church Bishop, was appointed the Supreme Pontiff.Jesus Christ, whose birth was prophesied by Isaiah (Isa. 7:14), was
sent by God to be the Saviour of the Jews. However, He wasn’t
recognized as the awaited Messiah, and was despised by religious
leaders who plotted against Him. These Jewish leaders became His
judges, presenting phony witnesses, and breaking eighteen Jewish
laws in order to have Him sentenced to death. Satan, who three years
before, had tempted Jesus in the wilderness, believed that through His
crucifixion, he had defeated Christ. But, as you know, He rose from the
dead three days later; and forty days later was transfigured into
heaven. With the Great Commission, Jesus had instructed His
disciples to go to all the world to spread the gospel, and Satan tried
his best to defeat the Christian movement.Two years after the establishment of the true Christian Church, Satan
raised up a man known as Simon Magus, a Babylonian priest, to do his
bidding. According to Acts 8:9-11, Simon “used sorcery, and
bewitched the people ... giving out that himself was some great one.”
Many people, “from the least to the greatest” were impressed with him,
thinking him to be “the great power of God.” When the apostle Philip
began to preach the gospel, and perform miracles in Samaria, Satan
saw the potential of being able to use Christianity for his own purpose,
and Simon tried to buy his way into an apostleship, without the
repenting his sins, in order to gain this mysterious new power. Simon
adopted some of the Christian teachings interweaving it with his own
pagan religion, and called it Christianity.The Dictionary of Christian Biography (Vol. 4, page 682) says: “...when
Justin Martyr wrote his ‘Apology’ (152 A.D.), the sect of the Simonians
appears to have been formidable, for he speaks four times of their
founder, Simon ... and tells that he came to Rome in the days of
Claudius Caesar (45 A.D.), and made such an impression by his
magical powers, that he was honored as a god, a statue being erected