this time the majority of the church leaders were thinking in terms of numbers and popularity, rather than in terms of spirituality and truth. They were ready to compromise with the various "mysteries" in order to achieve those ends. This was especially true at Rome.

By adopting the cross as a symbol on the banners of his army, and having a transverse letter "X" (a Greek Chi) marked on the shields of his soldiers, Constantine hoped to establish unity among his troops. The apostate and/or worldly Christians would think they were fighting for the cross of Christ; the pagans had already been fighting for years under a standard bearing a mithraic cross of light.1 The ploy worked and the battle at Milvian Bridge was won on 28 October, 312 A.D.

THE COUNCIL OF NICEA

In the year 325 A.D., the Nicean Council was called to put down and settle the Arian heresy. Arius believed that Jesus was not God come in the flesh - that He was only a created being - and not God with a capital "G". To him, Jesus was more than a man but not quite God.

Eusebius, a great historian who wrote a history of the early church, was also an Arian - a unregenerate religious man and a friend of Arius. Under great pressure from the orthodox Bishops at the Council, Constantine and Euseibus "took a more conciliatory view" concerning the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, they would no longer go all the way to Arianism, but they would not completely deny it either. But this simply cannot be done with Jesus. One cannot take a "conciliatory point of view" about the deity of Christ. The fundamental issue in whether one is actually a Christian or not is "Who is Jesus to you?" If a person does not believe unto the committing of his life that Jesus is God the creator (Jehovah) come in the flesh, that He died for the sins of the world and was raised from the dead on the third day to make the final blood atonement for mankind's sins, that person is not a Christian. That is the Biblical definition of a Christian. It is not someone who has been merely water baptized, confirmed, or has his name on the membership roll.

Arius did not relent and was banished. However, two years later Constantine allowed him to return. Constantine and Eusebius, like Arius, did not hold to the doctrine of "Consubstantiation" - that Jesus and God the Father were of one essence. Constantine had become not only the Emperor of the Roman Empire but, in effect, a Pope. As such, it was his duty and privilege to appoint all bishops, archbishops, etc., within the Church. From the human standpoint, the organized church had come completely under the authority of the Roman government. His son, Constantius II, inherited that power when he became Emperor. Like his father, Constantius was Arian (his brother Constans was orthodox) and all the bishops appointed by him were Arian in doctrine. As a consequence, for the next three hundred years every bishop in the Roman Catholic Church was Arian.2

CONSTANTINE COMMISSIONS EUSEBIUS TO PREPARE 50 BIBLES

In 331, Constantine instructed Eusebius to prepare fifty copies of the Bible so that he could place them in the major churches. This Eusebius did. The question is, what did Eusebius use for his guide in preparing these 50 Bibles for Constantine? Eusebius considered Origen to have been the greatest of men; he claimed to have collected 800 of Origen's letters and to have used his Hexapla. Thus, Eusebius - assisted by Pamphilus - selected the fifth column of Origen's Hexapla, with alternate readings from the other columns, for the Old Testament,3 adding the Apocrypha (books

1 Will Durant, The Story of Civilization. Caesar and Christ, Vol. 3, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944), p. 654. The X was also the symbol of the god Ham in Egypt: Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, op. cit., p. 204.

2 E.H. Broadbent, The Pilgrim Church, (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1931), pp. 21-22.

3 Ira M. Price, The Ancestry of our English Bible, 2nd ed., rev., (New York: Harper and Bros., 1949), p. 79.

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