Questions about Baptist beliefs

Actually that is revisionist history as produced by the RCC. Here is some of the 'real' history. (But it doesn't even mention the fourth great branch of the Living Church of Messiah Jesus - the Cyptic Church of Egypt. BTW, both the Cyptic and East Syrian /see below/ Churches had their own Bible, very much like ours, I might add).

In the year 1001 there were numerous pilgrimages to the
Holy Land from Europe, Africa, and India to
celbrate the start of the second Millinnium.
That year the largest Christian Church was the
East Syrian (Nestorian).
This church, the Catholic Apostolic Church of the East,
had over 250 dioceses across Asia and
12 million adhernets. More saints were commanded by this
chruch than the Bishop of Rome (Pope, the Roman
Catholic CHurch or the
Bishop of Conistanople/Patriarch of Antioch (Orthodox
Catholic Apostolic Church, AKA: Easter Orthodox). By 1051 the
Patriarch of Antioch and the Bishop of Rome excommunicated
the bishops, priests, and members each of the group.

During the next 200 years the Catholic Apostolic Church
of the East was crushed between the Mongols of the
East and the Muslim from the Southwest.

Needless to say, it is NOT in the best interests of
the Papists to have that information be of general knowledge.

NESTORIANS:

from: http://mb-soft.com/believe/txw/eastern.htm

The Nestorians are now only a pitiful remnant of what was once a great Church. Long before the heresy from which they have their name, there was a flourishing Christian community in Chaldea and Mesopotamia. According to their tradition it was founded by Addai and Mari (Addeus and Maris), two of the seventy-two Disciples. The present Nestorians count Mar Mari as the first Bishop of Ctesiphon and predecessor of their patriarch. In any case this community was originally subject to the Patriarch of Antioch. As his vicar, the metropolitan of the twin-cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon (on either side of the Tigris, north-east of Babylon) bore the title of catholicos. One of these metropolitans was present at the Council of Nicaea in 325. The great distance of this Church from Antioch led in early times to a state of semi-independence that prepared the way for the later schism. Already in the fourth century the Patriarch of Antioch waived his right of ordaining the catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, and allowed him to be ordained by his own suffragans. In view of the great importance of the right of ordaining, as a sign of jurisdiction throughout the East, this fact is important. But it does not seem that real independence of Antioch was acknowledged or even claimed till after the schism. In the fifth century the influence of the famous Theodore of Mopsuestia and that of his school of Edessa spread the heresy of Nestorius throughout this extreme Eastern Church. Naturally, the later Nestorians deny that their fathers accepted any new doctrine at that time, and they claim that Nestorius learned from them rather than they from him ("Nestorius eos secutus est, non ipsi Nestorium", Ebed-Jesu of Nisibis, about 1300. Assemani, "Bibli. Orient.", III, 1, 355). There may be truth in this. Theodore and his school had certainly prepared the way for Nestorius. In any case the rejection of the Council of Ephesus (431) by these Christians in Chaldea and Mesopotamia produced a schism between them and the rest of Christendom. When Babaeus, himself a Nestorian, became catholicos, in 498, there were practically no more Catholics in those parts. From Ctesiphon the Faith had spread across the frontier into Persia, even before that city was conquered bythe Persian king (244). The Persian Church, then, always depended on Ctesiphon and shared its heresy. From the fifth century this most remote of the Eastern Churches has been cut off from the rest of Christendom, and till modern times was the most separate and forgotten community of all. Shut out from the Roman Empire (Zeno closed the school of Edessa in 489), but, for a time at least, protected by the Persian kings, the Nestorian Church flourished around Ctesiphon, Nisibis (where the school was reorganized), and throughout Persia. Since the schism the catholicos occasionally assumed the title of patriarch. The Church then spread towards the East and sent missionaries to India and even China. A Nestorian inscription of the year 781 has been found at Singan Fu in China (J. Heller, S.J., "Prolegomena zu einer neuen Ausgabe der nestorianischen Inschrift von Singan Fu", in the "Verhandlungen des VII. internationalen Orientalistencongresses", Vienna, 1886, pp. 37 sp.). Its greatest extent was in the eleventh century, when twenty-five metropolitans obeyed the Nestorian patriarch. But since the end of the fourteenth century it has gradually sunk to a very small sect, first, because of a fierce persecution by the Mongols (Timur Leng), and then through internal disputes and schisms. Two great schisms as to the patriarchal succession in the sixteenth century led to a reunion of part of the Nestorian Church with Rome, forming the Catholic Chaldean Church. At present there are about 150,000 Nestorians living chiefly in highlands west of Lake Urumiah. They speak a modern dialect of Syriac. The patriarchate descends from uncle to nephew, or to younger brothers, in the family of Mama; each patriarch bears the name Simon (Mar Shimun) as a title. Ignoring the Second General Council, and of course strongly opposed to the Third (Ephesus), they only acknowledge the First Nicene (325). They have a Creed of their own, formed from an old Antiochene Creed, which does not contain any trace of the particular heresy from which their Church is named. In deed it is difficult to say how far any Nestorians now are conscious of the particular teaching condemned by the Council of Ephesus, though they still honour Nestorius, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and other undoubted heretics as saints and doctors. The patriarch rules over twelve other bishops (the list in Silbernagl, "Verfassung", p. 267). Their hierarchy consists of the patriarch, metropolitans, bishops, chorepiscopi, archdeacons, priests, deacons, subdeacons, and readers. There are also many monasteries. They use Syriac liturgically written in their own (Nestorian) form of the alphabet. The patriarch, who now generally calls himself "Patriarch of the East", resides at Kochanes, a remote valley of the Kurdish mountains by the Zab, on the frontier between Persia and Turkey. He has an undefined political jurisdiction over his people, though he does not receive a berat from the Sultan. In any ways this most remote Church stands alone; it has kept a number of curious and archaic customs (such as the perpetual abstinence of the patriarch, etc.) that separate it from other Eastern Churches almost as much as from those of the West. Lately the Archbishop of Canterbury's mission to the Nestorians has aroused a certain interest about them in England.

The location of the current 'Patriarch of the East' in in the Kurdish area where Turkey, Iran, and Iraq meet means the church is probably under persecution of the Kurds who in turn are being persecuted by the Turks, Iraqi, Irani, Russians, etc.


Finally in 1054 the Bishop of Rome (AKA: Pope) and the Patriarchs of the East mutually ex-communicated the clergy and patrons of the other group. Until 1054 there really was not any RCC (Roman Catholic Church). The Apostolic Succession of the RCC is a myth. By contrast, the Holy Scriptures have been preserved in many forms for the current generation(s).

 

Before you get too excited about the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church you might want to do some research on their beginning, not with the Apostles but with Constantine an emporer of the Roman Empire and first pope who, by the way, lived in Constantinople, now Instanbul.

The first major persecutor of the Church and individual Christians was the Roman Empire. Severe persecution began under Nero, continued under Domitian [81-96 AD], Trajan [98-117 AD], and intermittently thereafter until the time of Constantine. The most severe persecution of the Church began under the reign of Diocletian in 303 AD and lasted until 311 AD. Philip Schaff in his History of the Christian Church [Volume 2, page 68] describes one particular act of persecution under Diocletian in which one can readily see the fulfillment of John’s prophecy regarding those who do not wear the mark of the beast [Revelation 13:17], as follows:

The persecution raged longest and most fiercely in the East under the rule of Galerius and his barbarous nephew Maximin Daza, who was intrusted by Diocletian before his retirement with the dignity of Caesar and the extreme command of Egypt and Syria. He issued in autumn, 308, a fifth edict of persecution, which commanded that all males with their wives and servants, and even their children, should sacrifice and actually taste the accursed offerings, and that all provisions in the markets should be sprinkled with sacrificial wine. This monstrous law introduced a reign of terror for two years, and left the Christians no alternative but apostasy[2] or starvation.

The great persecution initiated during the reign of Diocletian ended with the issuance of an edict of toleration by Galerius, who was the real author of the persecution, in 311 AD shortly before his death. A second edict of toleration was issued by Constantine in 313 AD. The pagan empire of Rome had, for all practical purposes, been overcome by the spread of the gospel. That which had been revealed to Daniel [Daniel 7] had come to pass. Yet in that triumph of Christianity the seeds of what many believe to be a new manifestation of the beast were sown. Schaff writes [Volume 2, page 73]:

With Constantine, therefore, the last of the heathen, the first of the Christian, emperors, a new period begins. The church ascends the throne of the Caesars under the banner of the once despised, now honored and triumphant cross, and gives new vigor and lustre to the hoary empire of Rome.[emphasis added]

Schaff further writes [Volume 3, page 12]:

Constantine, the first Christian Caesar, the founder of Constantinople and the Byzantine empire, and one of the most gifted, energetic, and successful of the Roman emperors, was the first representative of the imposing idea of a Christian theocracy, or of that system of policy which assumes all subjects to be Christians, connects civil and religious rights, and regards church and state as the two arms of one and the same divine government on earth. This idea was more fully developed by his successors, it animated the whole middle age, and is yet working under various forms in these latest times; though it has never been fully realized, whether in the Byzantine, the German, or the Russian empire, the Roman church-state the Calvinistic republic of Geneva, or the early Puritanic colonies of New England. At the same time, however, Constantine stands also as the type of an undiscriminating and harmful conjunction of Christianity with politics, of the holy symbol of peace with the horrors of war, of the spiritual interests of the kingdom of heaven with the earthly interests of the state.

Although Schaff refers to Constantine as the first Christian Caesar it is not certain from a study of his life that he was a ‘true believer’. Constantine refused baptism until shortly before his death so that he might “secure all the benefit of baptism as a complete expiation of past sins” [Schaff, Volume 3, page 11ff].