Chapter 3
Constantine
Now that the institutional church (which Satan probably thought was THE Church of Jesus Christ) dominated the realm of Christendom, the next move in the enemy's plan was to be revealed. In a series of battles which would determine who was to be sole ruler of the Roman Empire, Constantine (a Mithraist, or sun-worshiper), who was a very shrewd politician, said he saw a vision in the sky, a Cross above the sun. Inscribed were the words, Conquer in this Sign. Reasoning that this meant he was to have a Christian army, Constantine marched his troops through a river to baptize them, put Christian emblems on his banners, and went forth to victory.
While Diocletan had thought that the survival of the Empire demanded the persecution and death of Christians, Constantine thought otherwise. Persecution was not very wise politically, as they only continued to multiply and brought great division in his Empire. His Edict of Toleration in 313 was a political act that achieved some kind of unity in an Empire that was cracking at the foundations. Even though his toleration of Christians is called by some the evidence of the "conversion of Constantine," it was not the first such edict that had been enforced in Rome. The belief that Constantine never became a Christian is substantiated by his deferring his baptism to his death-bed. He probably reasoned that if, as most churchmen claimed, baptism washed away sin, it was best to have it done at the last possible moment as one could not sin too much on his death-bed. Thus he was able to live as monstrous a life as he wanted and have all his sins washed away at the last moment, thereby hoping to get the best of both worlds.
This promotion of institutionalized Christianity into equality with paganism was a blessing to all true believers in that persecution ceased. However, in many places it was an advantage to join the Christian church, and many pagans submitted to the waters of Baptism for "cleansing", and became "Christians." It is probably true that some true Christians led repentant pagans to Christ, but the doctrinal deviation that started in Irenaeus and Ignatius and was continued by Cyprian and others had reduced the institutional church to a mere form, with many of the "conversions" utterly void.
The whole institutional church was promoted, in seeming triumph over a pagan empire that had vowed its destruction, while Satan, manipulating all this, anticipated the triumph that would soon be his in what he felt assured would be the entire destruction of the Church and the final triumph of his mystery of iniquity. The scene is set for a cataclysmic event. For centuries, Rome had been conquering the known world, and as they subjugated nations, they gathered what they felt were the best of the religious concepts of each land and incorporated them into their own pagan religion. Thus, at this time of history in Rome could be found the most refined and powerful pagan religious concepts which Satan had instituted thousands of years before and had spread throughout the world. They were culturally developed in many heathen lands and cultures, and had by now been brought together in pagan Rome.
It seemed like the showdown had come; it was the best of paganism vs. the institutionalized church. The unknowing onlooker could have seen this as the final end, when God's Mystery tangles with Satan's Mystery in mortal combat.
There was only one hitch. This was not God's Mystery, for God's True Church is a union of all saved people. This was a visible, institutional church, a union of all baptized people, many of whom were not saved. Satan may have thought that this would signal his ultimate victory, but the true Church of Jesus Christ, few and feeble, maintained the true faith and continued in relative obscurity for centuries while the spotlight of history highlighted the confrontation between the institutional church and the best of the pagan world.