This page covers the origin, corruption and future of the church including its grand beginnings, partial reformation, current apostasy and future glory.

The Christian church was born 50 days after Jesus’s resurrection and 10 days after His ascension on the day of Pentecost. Jesus promised the apostles that He would send the Holy Spirit to continue the work that He started, as stated in Acts 1:8:

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Pentecost started with a bang when the apostles were gathered together. The story is told in Acts 2:2-12:

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. ³ Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. ⁴ And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. ⁵ And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. ⁶ And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. ⁷ Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? ⁸ And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? ⁹ Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹ Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” ¹² So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “Whatever could this mean?”

Then Peter preached a powerful sermon with the results explained in Acts 2:41:

Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them.

Although Jesus and all the apostles were Jews, the message of repentance and salvation although originally for Jews, was soon intended for and available to both Jews and Gentiles.

The world hated God’s prophets in Old Testament times. It hated Jesus, it hated and murdered the apostles, and the early Christians were persecuted and slaughtered. That hatred and slaughter of true Christians has continued throughout history until the present time. In spite of that great persecution, the early church grew rapidly. That persecution temporarily ended at the beginning of the fourth century AD when Constantine legalized Christianity. However, that was not completely good news because at that time and in more recent times when a Christian state church was established it weakened what God intended for the church. Creating a state church corrupts it, makes it more liturgical, turns its mission from serving God to promoting the church organization and exploiting its parishioners.

Another factor that corrupted the church during the period of about 200-400 years into the church age was that the theological center of Christianity was changed from Antioch Syria to Alexandria Egypt; from the cradle of apostolic teaching to a location where intellectuals were steeped in Greek philosophy including a belief that the spirit is good, but the physical realm is evil. This philosophy conflicted with the plain sense literal interpretation of scripture. That conflict lead to using an allegorical interpretation of scripture where the plain sense meaning is denied and a new meaning is read into it that is consistent with the pervasive Greek philosophy. The main actors that established this false theology were Philo, Origen and Augustine. Augustine documented the false theology in his book “The City of God.”

One example of this is denying the 1000-year reign of Christ (The Kingdom of God) following His second coming that is clearly taught in Revelation Chapter 20 and throughout scripture. That denial resulted in an amillennial end times viewpoint that incorrectly turns the church age that we are in currently into the Millennial Kingdom. That changes the church’s mission from carrying out the great commission which is a spiritual endeavor to a social justice, physical endeavor where we try to solve all the inequities and bring in a utopia with perfect justice. The corruption that comes when the state and church are merged and the corruption of the scriptures that resulted from using an allegorical method of interpretation set the stage for a corrupted Catholic Church during the Dark Ages.