Dodo_David said:
The New Testament is silent about the Roman Catholic Church, because the RCC didn't come into existence until the Schism of 1054 CE.
Prior to that date, the universal Church was led by a group of Patriarchs who lived in the cities of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, with the Patriarchs being equals.
It was the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I who first imposed caesaropapism on the Christians living in eastern Europe.
The New Testament is full of quotes and references to Romanism --> Apostasies which would lead to caesaropapism.
The edict from 380 confirmed the Constantinian alliance established at Milan in 313 and the practice both of state control over orthodoxy of doctrine and state involvement in the internal affairs of the church. In the East the relationship between state and church developed into caesaropapism, the idea of a harmonious “symphony” between the two entities. According to this view, the state and the church have one and the same head, Jesus Christ; the emperor governs the state and defends the orthodox faith in the name of Christ, and the church is loyal to the emperor and makes decisions solely in the ecclesiastical domain. This system came close to being theocratic. But after the reign of Emperor Julian (“the Apostate,” 360–63), who tried to restore → paganism as the imperial religion and abolished the privileges that Constantine had granted to the Christian religion, → persecutions, backed by the power of the empire, of non-Christian citizens and persons labeled heretics became endemic.
So how did it begin?
In Armenia in about the year 301, King Tiridates III (259–314), who had been converted by Gregory the Illuminator (ca 240–332), made Christianity the state religion, the first nation in the world to take this step. The process of indigenization and institutionalization of Christianity in Armenia followed in the fourth and fifth centuries. In 365 the Armenian church declared its complete independence from Constantinople.
The system of caesaropapism was by and large the fundamental principle and system in the Orthodox churches until the 20th century. In Russia the system collapsed with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917–18, and in countries like Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia the same collapse took place after World War II. The persecution of Christians was rampant in the Communist countries because of the Marxist atheistic ideology, with very many being imprisoned and killed, and churches were closed and church property confiscated. After World War II a certain degree of cooperation was established between the → ROC and the Communist regime in the USSR because the church had been able to serve as a national symbol of unity and resistance during the war. In Albania all religions were prohibited in 1967, when the dictator Enver Hoxha (1944–85) declared Albania the first atheistic state in the world. Since the collapse of Communism in 1989 (→ Marxism), churches in eastern Europe have tried to establish new relationships with the states that respect the principle of the religious neutrality of the state and the independence of the churches.
One cannot argue with the History; the question is whether you can learn from it?
I am looking for the Russian Orthodox Church and the RCC to culminate with Europe / Arabs to become the power behind the King of the North who will eventually conquer the middle-east including Israel.
Roman Catholicism will play an essential role in persecuting the people of God...as it did in World War 2, but on a much larger scale.
Purity