BIZANTIUM

BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE OR ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE EAST

 © Carlos Padilla – August 2024

Constantine, declaring himself a Christian and trusting in the power of Yahshua – Jesus Christ, suddenly leaving the pagan worship and without followers in the army of the same and new faith that he represented with a large cross in the shields of his army after his vision of it before he defeated his rival Maxentius in 312 A.D. in the battle of the Milvian Bridge over the Tiber river, in Rome, whose arch of triumph is found next to the Coliseum, becoming emperor of the entire empire, of the East and of the West, after several battles, in 324 A.D. After the fall of Rome in 476 A.D. by the invasion of the German Barbarians, who also converted to Christianity afterwards, finally, the Roman Empire was divided in two, enduring the Eastern Roman Empire from 285 to 1453 A.D. in the Middle Age and the Crusades, and was conquered then by the Ottomans. The capital was Byzantium or Constantinople, today Istanbul, in the present Turkey, was the territory of expansion of the Gospel for Paul, and John, who in Revelation 1:4-20 writes to the seven churches that were in Asia (old name of the region), to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodiceans, by command of the Lord Jesus Christ. Rome, endured through Byzantium, as a continuation of the fourth empire of the prophecy of Daniel, which must endure through its alliances and covenants through all times until the return of the Messiah Jesus Christ who will establish the Eternal Kingdom. But, are the 10 kings of the prophecy of Daniel those identified in the prophecy of Ezekiel 38 and 39: Gog and Magog (China), Rosh (Russia), Togarma (Turkey) and the others, up to 10 who will invade Israel in the end of time? To deepen more on how the Biblical Roman Empire endures in history through its successions, the first through Byzantium, keep reading…

BYZANTIUM – CONSTANTINOPLE OR THE ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE EAST – ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAEL

The Jews of Jerusalem provided a great input to the Christian faith helping Saint Helen in finding and identifying the places of the acts of the Passion, death and resurrection of Christ, or the location of the Temple. Despite of that, the Jews of the Holy Land started to be under pressure to convert to Christianity under the imperial power, which was now Christian. Revolts continued from the III century, while the Mishnah was being composed from the Diaspora, even from Babylon, but together with the students of Tiberius Academy, the Jewish norms would be called “Talmud of Jerusalem”. Despite the growing anti-Semitism until the Middle Ages and the Crusades, and the prohibition and persecution, they got to build many Synagogues and to remain in time, but not ruling the Promised Land, nor Jerusalem: “See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall not see Me no more till you say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Matthew 23:38-39).

The monastic way of living has also been taken from the Jews, inspired in the life of the Essenes; something similar to the life in the desert of John the Baptist. The territories that Byzantium dominated therefore, included Israel, and Jerusalem, Judea, in particular. We should point out that Byzantium was Christian and multicultural, it was no longer anti-Christian and of imperial worship, but they were still Roman citizens, with their privileges. Towards the way they treated Israel, or Judea, or Jerusalem, they were not just one more people to dominate under the empire, but those who has rejected their Messiah, and of Christianity, though Rome was as guilty of the crucifixion of Christ as was the Sanhedrin, though we are all sinners and therefore the cause of the voluntary death of Christ for us, through His grace.

Israel, according to Romans 11:25-36 I key in the end of time, when restored, what many of us see as a fact since 1948, which in a prophetical way, Israel and Rome, or their representative forms, will be present at the end, before the coming of Jesus Christ to establish His kingdom. The Messianic movement growing fast is seeing how many Jews are receiving Yahshua, Yeshua or Jesus Christ, as Messiah, Lord, and Saviour, saying: “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord”, because now they see Him.

BYZANTIUM – CONSTANTINOPLE AND ITS INFLUENCE IN HISTORY

Byzantium was the city over which the Emperor Constantine raised the new capital of the empire, Constantinople, enlarging it and converting it in the new Rome. For its strategic location in the frontier between the furthest eastern end of Europe and controlling the straight of the Bosphorus, it would be the ideal place which through the centuries would dominate the continuation and what remained of the Roman Empire, after the fall of Rome and during the Middle Age, until it was taken by the Ottomans in 1453 A.D. Constantine use to say that it was from God that he had to dominate all the empire and take Christianity to every place, something that other emperors wanted to do before him, but with the pagan worship, and always failed. From the capital, Constantinople, today Istanbul, he would govern the territories of the Mediterranean of the western part which was under Rome. Though their citizens considered themselves as Romans at the beginning, they finally remained and used the Greek language, which would become the main one in the VII century, especially the Greek worship has remained in the Orthodox Church, arguing that the New Testament was written in Greek and for their inherited culture in part from Hellenism. Those in the west called Byzantium the Greek Empire. The Greek culture influenced more in this part of the empire, which would influence the way that the next generations would develop, more focused in the Greek part, while the Latin part would develop in a different way historically due to the cultural difference of the west.

The truth is, that, Constantine, declaring himself a Christian and trusting in the power of Jesus Christ, suddenly leaving the pagan worship and with few followers in the army with the same faith, defeated his rival Maxentium in 312 A.D. in the battle of the Milvian Bridge over the river Tiber, which’s triumphal arch is located next to the Coliseum, a few metres away from the triumphal arch of Titus for his victory in the siege and looting of Jerusalem. Constantine, then and as we mentioned, would take Christianity to all the empire, and its effects remain to our days. For starters, the Edict of Milan in 313 was in force which put to an end the persecution to Christians. Though later the city of Rome fell taken by the Barbarians, these, with time would also convert to Christianity.

But many saw the conversion or Constantine to Christianity as the beginning of the paganization of the faith, and flew to the deserts and isolated places, bringing the beginning of the monastic movement, through those who saw that Christianity was incompatible with the imperial faith, which would mix it with the pagan life. Others emigrated and started to say that they found Relics and that the followed saints and the Virgin, and that there were miracles and healing power in the Relics. The Church had a problem to solve with this deviation, but another was adding coming from society, the heresies from theological debates, like Arianism, which together with others, would be rejected in the Ecumenical Councils and through the defence of the Fathers of the Church: The Athanasian Creed, Saint Augustine of Hippo, Ambrose of Milan. Christians, until then they gathered in houses, cemeteries and catacombs –like the ones of Saint Callixtus, in the outskirts of Rome– but now the empire and the Church were uniting in the new worship, and pagan traditions were adopted in the rites, like the incense to the emperor, the dressings of the bishops, the decoration of the churches, all changed from the simplicity to the opulence which the imperial power denoted.

Byzantium is the frontier between East and West, an amalgam of cultures, some kind of frontier between both worlds, at the time that it is a fusion of both with a culture of the place which provides a baggage of experiences, knowledge and culture, at the time that it was a barrier against the progression of Islam until 1453 A.D. while in the same period, the area of the west had in the Al-Andalus had part of the Muslim conquest since 711, which finally the Catholic Kings Isabel and Ferdinand would expel from Spain, coinciding in time the fall of Byzantium with the end of the Reconquest, and sending Christopher Columbus to the expedition that would discover America in 1492. It seemed that the positions were being exchanged, being now that the west heir of Christian Rome, would be the remnant of Christianity, falling Byzantium eastern heir or Christianity, but only at imperial level, because the Church would no longer cease in any of the two parts in its growth or subsistence proclaiming the Gospel, though many traditions are opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Orthodox Church which was originated from Byzantium, prevails to this day in relevant countries like Greece, Russia, Holy Land –in Jerusalem they are guards of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre; another great work of Constantine– together with the Franciscan friars, and the Armenian Church “Custodia Terrae Santae”, as well as the Temple of Saint Sophia, today a museum, was first a Basilica Church and after a Mosque, and is one of the original projects of Constantine that was made greater afterwards, using the plan of “Basilica” to raise large Churches, that after, when adding to them the apse in the semicircular area at the end of the sanctuary, where the presbytery would sit and the bishop had its chair “cathedra”, origin of the term cathedral. Also Saint Helen, empress, mother or Constantine, was who found the place of the Holy Sepulchre and according to tradition, the true cross of Christ, as well as the steps of Pilate through which Jesus walked to be sentenced, the same that are supposedly in the Scala Sancta, in Rome.

This aim was the same that began the Crusades, a call from Pope Urban II circa the year 1000 A.D. when the world thought the Final Judgment was coming, to reconquest Jerusalem then in the hands of the Turks. Whether wrong or not, the bishop of Rome, the first attempts failed, but would triumph in 1099 after swearing to emperor Alexios of Byzantium that the conquered lands would remain under the Empire of the East, which happened and would be called Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, being that today the title of king of Jerusalem is held by the king of Spain. There were many crusades and all wanted to take benefit, from Genoa and Venice and many merchants who had contributed with their ships, received benefits, but also the market of Relics propagated. All an effort to prove the existence of the historical Jesus for the small faith of the believers, in a world where the Bible was not accessible to everyone in the empire, and in every language they could understand, only those who read Greek, Hebrew, and finally Latin, but it was kept for the clergy, a great privilege that we have today in almost all the languages of the world, the Word of God.

PROPHECIES OF BYZANTIUM IN THE CONTINUATION OF THE FOURTH EMPIRE OF THE PROPHECY OF DANIEL

Despite the division of the Roman Empire in two parts, and being that the Roman Empire of the East would prevail, also called Byzantine, or Byzantium, Christianity would prevail in two cities that would also divide as headquarters of the Church: Rome and Catholicism, and Constantinople and Byzantine Christianity, afterwards Orthodox, which in the VIII century prohibited the use of religious images, but would use icons, so they are called iconoclasts. In the XI century the final Great Schism of the east and west took place at a religious level, after the imperial intents of Charlemagne, on the one side, and on of Constantine before, on the other hand, both failed. Since the fall of Rome in 476 A.D. to present, we see a history of divide legacy, an existence that does not manage to unify as Europe, in the feet of clay and iron, with the toes of clay and iron, of the statue of Nebuchadnezzar revealed to the prophet Daniel, show that the prevalence of the Roman Empire, in the future European world which ends with the European Union, cannot unify, like the clay and the iron cannot either, because they cannot mix.

But, those 10 toes of the feet of the statue of the prophecy of Daniel 2, which, as we have seen were of iron and clay, could represent the successive covenants of the kingdoms of the empires which have been surging in the territory that was of the Roman Empire, through marriages between the European monarchies, and of other countries of the Roman and Byzantine empires “Greek-Roman culture” to our days. The European Union maintains a fragile and anti natural union between cultures, monarchies, peoples and societies opposed among each other, with the only unity of the coin, the Euro, taxes and a government system, that, under the appearance of democracy, it is not vote by the citizens, but which votes itself in Brussels for the current 27 member countries, which could reduce to 10, or due to the disappearance of the EU, producing a final Mediterranean alliance that would be similar to what the Roman Empire was once, including Greece, the area of Byzantium, and of course Israel.

Europe, from Rome and Byzantium would go from being the result of an empire, to monarchies, and in every case with religious influence of different nature. However, in a particular moment, it would become a theocratic Catholic government system which was seen in the influence of the popes over the monarchies. The separation from Rome of Henry the VIII to take the head of the Anglican Church and be able to marry who he wanted, and the Protestant Reformation which, on the contrary as the English cause, was of a pure theological purpose, would leave the Vatican with less power, until the communism would arrive and the later secularization of the western society, until postmodernism and the present transmodernism. A world that rejects God in all scopes of society, mainly guided by the Antichrist, is what the Biblical prophecies proclaim, as the anteroom of the coming of Jesus Christ, 2 Thessalonians 2:4.

Last, for this chapter, we must point out that the Byzantine Church or Orthodox, as the continuation of the Church of Rome, shares its spirit of religious imposition which becomes patent in the great similarity of their service, in the way they treat the believer, in the doctrine, which it even departs more from the sane doctrine than the first one along the history of the Church. A detail that calls our attention is the similarity of counting with 7 hills or mounts in both cities, like the 7 heads which are 7 mounts, where the “Woman” sits on, in Revelation 17:9-11: both the Vatican as Constantinople have 7 hills or mounts, which sisters them after their division in the Great Schism of East and West for their deviated doctrine from the original of the Lord Jesus Christ – Yahshua and His apostles in the New Testament. In 787 A.D. in a council in Nicaea they approved the use of holy icons instead of images, but practically it is the same for many, and it does not follow the Second Commandment of the Decalogue that God gave Moses. Though there are several groups of Orthodox churches, there are two main ones: the Caledonians and the Nestorians. They do not accept the papal infallibility, and each has a bishop, though they name patriarchs, they support that the first council and bishop was in Jerusalem in the first council, Acts 15. The more relevant doctrinal differences between both churches, Rome and Byzantium, are: The “Filioque Clause” from Latin filius “son” which was added in a council in Toledo, Spain, in 589 A.D. to the Nicene Creed that: “The Holy Spirit, that proceeds from the Father” added “And from the Son” something clear from the teaching of the Son Jesus Christ in John 15:26. This matter of the “Filioque Clause” was key in the Great Schism of the East and West when they finally separated in 1054 A.D. This difference comes from early ages in which the divinity of the Son was debated, which became clear for both churches after a previous council which rejected Arianism (the Son is not eternal, and was created by the Father), which was against the true doctrine; see Gospel of John 1. The fear of a wrong interpretation of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit, was the cause of the Filioque, so that the Son would never be seen as non eternal, so the Church of the West has kept it like this in the Nicene Creed, while the Church of the East wanted that the precedence from the Father would always be in first place in the order that it is mentioned in the Trinity, and that the distinction between the Father and the Son would remain. They do not coincide in the doctrine of the Purgatory, being that the Byzantine or Orthodox rejects it, as it is of pagan origin, as mentioned in the second apocryphal book of the Maccabees, chapter 12, non canonical, where Israel inherited false believes while in captivity; Jesus makes it clear that there is no purgatory in Luke 16:19-31. They do not have celibacy obligatory, like the Roman Church, and some differences in the liturgy, the priest order and the sacraments. Rather than that they are very similar. What is clear is that the Church was getting divided –the same as the feet and toes of clay and iron that cannot mix with each other?- not only due to doctrines, but for political situations, power, wars, etc. Something that Christians should not permit, but work to unite and make doctrines clear, for the glory of God.

The 10 kings that succeed the Roman Empire and that remain until today, are the 10 kings or empires or eras of power of successions of the Roman Church, or of Europe, or will the 10 that will be governing the world before the coming of Jesus Christ to establish the Kingdom of God? We will follow the history, with the successive forms that the Biblical Roman Empire will adopt, like for instance the alliances of the papacy with the European crowns to govern the world, in successive Biblical, Theological and historical Studies, which will allow us to see the 10 kings, and how at the end, the prophecy of Daniel will be fulfilled, when in the time of these kings, a stone cut, not by human hand, will destroy the statue of gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay, at the instauration of the Kingdom of God, in the coming of Jesus Christ. Nebuchadnezzar declared to Daniel that the Lord was the King of heaven who reveals the mysteries and gives prophecies, in Daniel 2.

But, these 10 kings could already be identified in the prophecy against God of Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39: Gog and Magog (son of Japheth – multitude immigrated to China), Rosh (sometimes chief, Russia), Meshech, Tubal, Persia (Iran), Cush (Ethiopia), Put (Libya), Gomer, Togarmah (Turkey). The prophetic preacher and founder of the Christian TV channel CBN, and the 700 Club, who recently departed with the Lord, had clear that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was the anteroom that prepared the invasion of Russia and Turkey of Israel. While I write these lines, the Turkish president threatened to invade Israel for defending itself against terrorist attacks in their territory. The Lord enters into judgment against the nations who attack Israel and Judah, nations which are 10 ethical groups, kings or political governors that could be these 10 kings of the end time, led by the 5 permanent members of the Security Council of United Nations with right to veto: United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China, each one being a head of a group of nations without such power, like the feet of clay and iron, and the 10 toes of the feet of the statue of the prophecy of Daniel.

If we link Rosh with Russia, as several students affirm in base of: “and say to Gog: Thus says the Lord God: On that day when My people Israel dwell safely, will you not know it? Then you will come from your place out of the far north, you and many peoples with you…” (Ezekiel 28:14-16). If it refers to Russia and the alliance of Turkey with Iran, and China, etc., we are talking about lands legated by Byzantium, both for location, as by the Orthodox Church, which wants to conquer Jerusalem and destroy Israel, and the Jews, being attacked by an army of multitude of nations, including the Dragon.

Byzantium is the first prophetical continuation of the Biblical Rome, but we will see the following forms it adopts, God willing, in the next study.

THE SPIRIT OF BYZANTIUM IN THE LIFE OF THE BELIEVER

We have learned that Byzantium is a continuation of the Roman Empire, first after the fall or Rome, and then after a division by the Great Schism of the East and the West, a rupture, a weakening of the previous unity. However, at a religious level, Byzantium is a system which is even more jealous of its tradition than the previous, which is already difficult, maybe because it feels heir and keeper of a tradition which may be considered older, more linked to the Greek world, which was before the Roman, which is true, and however it is equally deviated from the Biblical truth of the Gospel in many traditions which are contrary to the Sane Doctrine of Jesus Christ – Yahshua, the same as the Roman Catholic Church.

The Byzantine spirit, or being under Byzantium is another way of wanting to belong to a true church, the oldest possible, the closest to the apostles, but as it occurred to the Sanhedrin, the Orthodox Church must reform itself and compare itself with the Primitive Church which is found in the Gospels in the Bible, the Acts and the Epistles of the New Testament. To be under this spirit puts first the belonging and a strong tradition, to the truth, to the Gospel of Christ, influences and deviates from the truth the life of the believer who receives as truth all the doctrine that comes from that Church, as if their leaders or patriarchs could not be mistaken, with the only base that their tradition is the oldest, to their eyes, but they do not compare it with the New Testament. If they did, the same as every church must do as well as every believer, they would only come to Jesus Christ as Mediator between the Father and us, they would only accept the doctrines of the New Testament, and those that contradict would be rejected, they would not pray to the Virgin, or to the saints; they would not offer masses for their ancestors because the purgatory does not exist; they would not ask for works and sacraments to achieve salvation as well as faith, etc. because all that is tradition, not the truth of Christ in His Word, which He has left us for that purpose through His apostles so that we would not fall under these spirits of deceit, heresy and idolatry to the belonging to thing made by men and not by God. “Come out of here, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues” Revelation 18:4. This verse is to be applied to any church which does not teach the Sane Doctrine of the Bible in the New Testament, whichever denomination is of.

CONCLUSION

Constantine raised in Byzantium a new capital of the Roman Empire, and gave it his name: Constantinople. Strategically located dominating the straight of the Bosphorus, has been the promoter of great Churches like Saint Sophia, today a museum, and has made Christianity as official religion of the empire as legacy, preserving and providing history, archaeology, and ecumenical councils which helped preserve the Christian faith by the defence of the Fathers of the Church: The Athanasian Creed, Saint Augustine of Hippo, Ambrosia of Milan. Christians, until then, would gather in houses, cemeteries and catacombs, but now the empire and the Church were getting together in the new worship and in the rites some pagan traditions were adopted, like the incense to the emperor, the dressings of the bishops, the decoration of the churches, all changed from simplicity to the opulence of the imperial power.

Byzantium is the frontier between the East and the West, an amalgam of cultures, a kind of frontier between both worlds. Despite the advance of Islam and the fall of Byzantium in 1453 A.D. while in the western part, the Catholic Kings would expel Muslims and Jews not converted, from Spain, coinciding in time the fall of Byzantium with the end of the Reconquest, and the discovery of America in 1492. The Orthodox Church, which is original from Byzantium, prevails until today in the Holy Land –in Jerusalem they are keepers of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre; another great work of Constantine– together with Franciscan friars, and the Armenian Church “Custodia Terrae Santae”. The Crusades and the Relics have fed the cathedrals of all Europe, but they served to preserve the week faith of a dark and medieval world, where the Jews that provided wisdom and help in identifying the holy places of Christianity, were persecuted and deported to the Diaspora, though preserved by God in His promise to restoration in the Promised Land at the end of time, which already shines in the Messianic who believe in Yahshua – Jesus Christ as the Messiah.

Prophecy shows us that, since the fall of Rome in 476 A.D. to present, we see the history of historical legacy, and although divided shows an existence that does not manage to become unified as Europe, as the feet of clay and iron, like the toes of clay and iron of the statue of the prophecy of Daniel, which show that the prevalence of the Roman Empire in the future European world which concludes with the European Union, cannot be united. But those 10 toes of the feet of the statue of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar may represent successive covenants of the kingdoms of the empires which have been surging in the territory that was once the Roman Empire, through marriages between the European monarchies, and of other countries of the Roman and Byzantine empires “Greek-Roman culture” until our days. The European Union maintains a fragile unity and unnatural between cultures, monarchies, peoples and societies that oppose each other, mixed with a world that rejects God in all the ambits of society mainly, led by an Antichrist spirit, is what Biblical prophecies proclaim before we see Jesus Christ coming, 2 Thessalonians 2:4. Byzantium is, then, prophetically, the continuation of the Biblical Rome, the fourth empire of the prophecy of Daniel, and in its continuation, in the religious part, has provided the Athanasian Creed, the battle against Arianism, and other anchors of the faith fruit of great Ecumenical Councils in which Fathers of the faith have been present, like Augustine of Hippo, or Athanasius. But the 10 kings may also be those in the prophecy of Daniel identified in the prophecy of Ezekiel 38 and 39: Gog and Magog (China), Rosh (Russia), Togarma (Turkey) and the others, up to 10 who will invade Israel in the end of time, that could be the 5 permanent members of the Security Council of United Nations with right to veto: United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China, each one being a head of a group of nations without such power, like the feet of clay and iron, and the 10 toes of the feet of the statue of the prophecy of Daniel.

Finally, we are warned of the spirit of Byzantium, to be under Byzantium, a special characteristic which stands out in the strongest rooting to tradition, which becomes idolatry, even though they are iconoclasts and have no images for worship, they have their tradition as idol, the belonging, the submission to their worship as the only and true, even though it is not what the New Testament exposes. This spirit is present in many churches, not only in the Byzantine or Orthodox, but in the Catholic, but also in many Protestant and Evangelical. The Lord has warned us: “Come out of here, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues” Revelation 18:4. Amen.