Publisher's Synopsis
Matthew 16:13-19: "When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" So they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." (You will notice that in giving this answer they are saying that everyone they had talked to said that He was someone from the past). He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living GOD." Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."Here we have a short passage in which Peter, as a representative or spokesperson for the other disciples, recognized under GOD's inspiration that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of GOD. As soon as he said this, Jesus then says in response that He will build His church. It is as if having confessed this to Jesus, having come to the realization of who He was, then Jesus said; "Great, that's what I was looking for and now I can begin to build My church." Then He adds that the gates of Hades will not prevail against it, meaning that now that it has begun it will go on forever until its purpose is accomplished; but we know from secular history, and we can see bits and pieces of it within GOD's Word, that within a couple of generations the church Jesus founded had been corrupted both from within and without. However, Jesus' word stands true in that He did found that church and it will continue despite death, despite all the machinations of Satan the Devil, and it will continue and does continue to this day. By the beginning of the second century the church that appears under the name Christian is nothing like the one that turned the world upside down after that day of Pentecost in AD 31. Biblical scholar Jesse Lyman Hurlburt who said that when the curtain was raised on the second century, the church that appears as Christian is totally different from the one that Jesus founded. It certainly seemed that when the corruption set in on the church that it would collapse and die, but the few faithful children of GOD went underground for the most part. They fled to remote but still peaceful areas of the Roman Empire and even went beyond the empire where they could practice their faith without persecution. The church that was left behind by these faithful people became this corrupted church. This visible, corrupt church appropriated the name "Christian" and took on a form of righteousness that adhered in some ways to the teachings of Christ but as the decades rolled on it found itself unable to even uphold many of those. By the time you get to the fourth century and the time of Constantine and the great councils of that church, they had rejected a major portion of true Christianity, but they continued on as the visible church. This corruption in that visible church became especially evident during the late Middle Ages in the 14th and 15th centuries. Lately, I have been reading a book called A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuckman, which I highly recommend. It is an excellent historical survey of the cultures, people, and events during the time of the Hundred Years War. The Hundred Years War was that great war between England and France that just dragged on and on because of the territorial ambitions of the kings of England. One of the major players in this century and in these wars was the Roman Catholic Church. That was the name of the successor of that visible Christian but corrupt church that came out of the second century.
