Where do you stand as a Christian?

Much of what happens in this world is cyclical. In fact, the essential truth of what happens is always so.

Imagine what it was like to be living at the time of the 4th Century Christians, when Emperor Constantine was fighting to regain Rome's Western Region? He was in Constantinople, the city named after him, which is today's Istanbul in Turkey. There was a significant Church there at the time, the Ancient Church of the East, centered in the town of Urhai in Asia Minor, today's Orpha in Turkey.

It was in the emperor's interest to become Christian and marshal the forces of the growing Christianity among the Greeks and pagans of Europe. With them the emperor was able to regain Rome and unite his Eastern Region with the estranged Western Region.

Constantine, who is really the first Pope of the Roman Church, had to end the genocide against the Christians of Rome; but first he had to deal with Eastern Christianity's dominance in theology and the preservation of the Scriptures in the Ancient Aramaic language and the early Jewish traditions which were part and parcel of Early Christianity since the Jerusalem Days.

So the emperor turned against the Ancient Church of the East and massacred them and drove them deep into the Persian Empire, which was still predominantly Zoroastrian.

Thus Roman Christianity broke away from Eastern Christianity and the Ancient Church of the East went on to become the greatest Church of Christianity until the 12 Century, despite the advent of Islam in the 7th Century in the Holy Lands and the Fertile Crescent, namely Mesopotamia.

Then again, imagine what it was like to be a Christian when Islam was spreading in the Holy Lands and the Middle East, when the Ancient Church of the East came under persecution of the Arabs and the Persians who had converted to Islam during the conquests of the Holy Lands and the entire Middle East during the subsequent centuries?

A thousand years since the birth of Eashoa (Jesus), Eastern Christianity was nearly wiped out from the Middle East; but the Lord saved them from total annihilation for a purpose, and that purpose was to preserve the Scriptures that the Roman Church had seized and manipulated to serve the purposes of the Holy Roman Empire, practicing a renegade form of Christianity which emerged after the Fall of Rome.

This form of Christianity spawned the Protestant Movement after the Age of Reformation. During the Dark Ages of Europe, Eastern Christianity was forgotten, and Western Christianity did not realize that there was an Ancient Church of the East still surviving in the East until the mid-19th Century, when the science of archeology came into being as a result of the interest in ancient ruins of Mesopotamia by a young Englishman whose name was Austen Henry Layard. Later he was knighted for the work that he began.

Sir Austen Henry Layard also discovered the descendants of the Ashurai people and found out that they had preserved the Scriptures in the original language that Eashoa (Jesus) spoke. They were also among the first nations to accept Eashoa (Jesus) and the Apostolic Faith in His Name. In fact, they were the first nation as a whole to accept Eashoa (Jesus) as the Messiah prophesied by the Scriptures. These were also the descendants of the Men of Nineveh whom Eashoa (Jesus) had blessed in Matthew 12:39-40.

Then 2000 years after the birth of Eashoa (Jesus), now, we have another wave of persecution against Eastern Christianity, caused by the Western nations' war against Islamic Extremists. Ironically this persecution is happening at a time when the Western nations, especially the US, are in the throes of rejecting Christianity altogether and driving it out of their public life.

It was Islam that drove the Crusaders out of Jerusalem 1000 years ago; but the Ancient Church of the East survived, even though it was in the middle of Islam. David's 23rd Psalm comes to mind. Now that the US is trying to bring democracy and religious toleration to the Middle East, we have a taste of what it was like to be a Christian in Mesopotamia 1000 years ago.

Therefore, Christianity will survive again, because it is the Lord's will that it should. However, which form of Christianity will survive? The Christianity based on the Ancient Aramaic Scriptures or the Western Bibles?