Hello and welcome to Z3 News.
I'm James Bailey, and today is Monday, May 18, 2020.
And today I'm continuing along the lines of the programs I shared last week.
And this is part of a new series that I started based on a prompting I received on
Sunday, May 10, where I believe God put it in my heart to start sharing news items.
And I am going to do that.
That's what I'm working toward.
But I wanted to start by sharing a scriptural foundation for what I believe,
because otherwise I think my views are going to sound like nonsense to a lot of
people.
But I believe the scriptures are our most reliable, most trustworthy source of
information.
And what's amazing to me is that the scriptures provide us with all the answers
we need to understand what's happening in the world today and what's coming in the
future.
It really is amazing if we just take the time to study what it's saying.
It gives us all the information we need, yet so many of us have spent our time
listening to other sources and we haven't had to try very hard because the whole
world is bombarding us with other narratives, false narratives that
contradict the scriptural perspective.
As a result, there's a lot of confusion.
We've been bombarded in our schools.
Our teachings from history textbooks have omitted the reasons behind historical
events.
So when it's presented to us, we just get this series of events and dates and names
and there's no real ability.
We don't connect the dots because the key pieces of information were removed.
God has been removed and he is the key piece of information that we need to
understand these things.
So in the previous programs I've been sharing from the scriptures, starting with
Daniel chapter 2 regarding Nebuchadnezzar's dream about seeing a
great statue that showed different sections of the statue were revealing
different kingdoms to come upon the earth, starting with his own kingdom and then
ending there was a total of four kingdoms and it ends with the legs made of iron and
the feet made of clay and iron mixed in.
And what's so amazing about that dream, that vision, and that picture that it
portrays of the legs of iron and then the feet of iron and clay is it completely
illustrates what has been happening in the world for the past 2700 years.
And so I'm going to start shifting the focus just a little bit.
I still have more scriptures to share, but I want to start shifting the focus to
show how the events from history in the past few hundred years especially have
exactly aligned with what Nebuchadnezzar saw in that transition from the legs of
iron to the feet of clay with iron mixed in.
It's really amazing when you start seeing it in history and then it really sets the
stage for us to understand where we are and who is truly behind the events that
are happening in the world today.
It's so vitally important for us to get that perspective both from the scriptures
and from history.
But then I also shared from Daniel chapter 9 because that also reveals Rome is the
empire that will be behind the Antichrist at the time of the end.
And I explained that in a previous program as well.
And then I also went into Revelation chapter 13 to show that the one who comes
as the second beast who comes as a lamb perfectly fits the description of the
Roman Catholic Pope.
And I'm going to be sharing more scriptures along that line to show the
connection between the Roman Catholic Church and Mystery Babylon as it's
described in the scriptures.
It's also called the mother of all harlots.
Now when it comes to history, I do not like taking anyone else's word for it.
As soon as someone makes a claim, I want to know where did you get that
from?
And I look for the source.
And I like to find sources that are as close as possible to the time of the
actual event, preferably they were there as a first-hand eyewitness if possible.
So it's great to base our beliefs on the scriptures, but when it comes to history,
I really want hard factual evidence to know what I'm talking about.
And so for the past several days, I have been digging and digging and
digging, and I am really so excited about what I've found because it is clearly the
start, that transition period, maybe you call it the ankles of the statue
that Nebuchadnezzar saw because we, the world, went through a major shifting,
a major transformation when we changed over from the legs to the feet.
And that happened a couple of hundred years ago.
And I'm going to go back, I'm going to take some time to explain that because
when you can see that from historical facts, and thank God there's enough hard
facts that we can know without a doubt, I don't have to have any doubt about it,
as to what happened, who was behind it, who came out of it on top, and how the
world was dramatically changed ever since.
And it's really something everyone needs to understand, but sad to say,
I mean these are events that I was taught in school, I was required to read books
about them, never had the slightest idea what any of it meant.
And it's not a coincidence because you can go back and find historical evidence that
different organizations have made a concerted effort to rewrite the events of
history, to omit the crimes committed by the culprits, the true culprits behind
these things, so that we never ever hear about it.
And then when we finally do hear about it, it sounds so bizarre, so way out there.
And it's because we've lived our whole life in deception.
It's an amazing thing, especially when you've lived as long as I have,
to think, good grief, I've been believing this false narrative my whole life.
So I'm very eager to share what I've discovered regarding this major shift that
occurred.
And I was planning originally to share that today, but it occurred to me that
just as historians have omitted the truth about that shift, they have also misled us
about another shift that has supposedly happened in the Roman Kingdom that never
did happen.
So we've been misled on both counts, and I think it's important to lay the
groundwork to go back and establish the truth about that first major shift that
never did happen.
And then on tomorrow's program, hopefully, we'll be able to go into the
details about the shift that we were never told about that did happen.
What a mess!
Anyway, we don't need to spend forever studying the history of Rome, but we do
need to have at least a basic understanding of the facts of history,
because this Kingdom, we need to understand who this is that we're dealing
with, and who this is that's ruling over planet Earth.
It's a major important thing because if we can understand what's operating,
then we can understand and believe what's happening today, because otherwise it can
be very difficult for the sheep to believe that the wolves could be so evil,
because sheep are not used to thinking like wolves.
And so I think it's really important that we understand the nature of this Kingdom
that they have demonstrated through all of their 2700 years of existence.
Now the popular narrative about the Roman Empire, which I'm calling the Roman
Kingdom to kind of cover all the different spans of it, but the popular narrative has
been that they were a pagan empire, but in the 4th century AD they converted
to Christianity, and they've been a Christian empire ever since.
Well, that narrative is easily proven false by the facts of history,
and it's really even comical to the point of absurdity that they continue to make
the claim, because all the facts of history centering around that period of
the 4th century all disprove that it ever even happened.
It all goes back to Emperor Constantine in the 4th century and his supposed
conversion to Christianity.
Constantine became emperor in the year 306.
At that time, the kingdom was divided into four parts, so he initially was just
emperor over one of those parts.
He later, through military conquests, unified the kingdom.
But at that time, the Roman Kingdom had been in existence for about a thousand
years, and in all that time, they were unquestionably devoted to this what they
called the Pantheon of Roman Gods, and this included gods like Jupiter,
Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Venus, Apollo, Diana, Mithras, and many others.
They had constructed temples to these gods throughout their kingdom, and they had
people who acted as oracles to speak in behalf of their gods so that when they had
important decisions to make, they went to the oracle, and they would perform these
ceremonies where they would sacrifice an animal and spread out the insides of the
animal, and supposedly the oracle could read the entrails to determine the
direction that the Roman emperors needed to take.
Now, by the time Constantine came to power, Rome had been consistently
persecuting the Jews for hundreds of years, and in more recent times,
the past 300 years, they had been persecuting the Christians right alongside
of the Jews.
It was the Roman armies in 70 AD that surrounded Jerusalem and destroyed the
temple and the city and killed over one million Jewish people, and they captured
another hundred thousand and took them back to Rome to be sold into slavery.
And that's the event that I mentioned in a previous program that's recorded in Daniel
chapter 9 as a prophetic event that was to come, but was later fulfilled over a
period of a few years from 66 to 76 AD.
And that was not an isolated event.
It was part of an ongoing pattern of persecution that continued relentlessly,
emperor after emperor.
But despite all their severe persecution and execution of Christians, their
strategy was failing to work, and the spread of Christianity just continued
stronger and stronger until by the time Constantine came to power, there were
Christians at every level of Roman society and in every kind of occupation.
For example, in the Roman military in the year 286, there was an entire legion of
Roman soldiers who were all Christians.
And this legion consisted of 6,666 men.
It's called the Theban Legion because all the men in that legion had been raised in
a city called Thebius.
And at that time, the emperor Maximian ordered them to march to Gaul,
which would be modern day France, to assist them in a war against the people
of Burgundy.
And they were loyal to the emperor's orders until he ordered the whole legion
to participate in a sacrifice to the pagan gods and also to take an oath of
allegiance in which they were required to swear their assistance in exterminating
all the Christians living in Gaul.
And so these soldiers were forced
to obey the emperor's orders.
And the emperor was, of course, infuriated by their refusal to obey his
orders.
And so they had a standoff.
And the emperor ultimately ordered one-tenth of them to be put to death by
the sword, hoping that the other 90% would reconsider and follow his commands.
But they killed, it's called decimating, they killed one-tenth of them by the sword
and the other 90% held firm.
So he ordered a second time to kill another 10%.
And again, the survivors all stood firm, refused to compromise.
And so this really infuriated the emperor and he ordered his other legions to just
execute the entire Theban legion.
And they were all put to death by the sword.
Now that event just illustrates the climate of Rome at the time that
Constantine took power in 306.
So that was just 30 years before he took power.
The Christian influence had become a major problem for Rome.
There were Christians in business who were prospering.
There were Christians in government positions.
So this issue of the Christians was threatening to divide the entire empire.
And so Rome did what they always do, they consulted the oracle of their pagan
gods.
And the emperor, one of the emperors that ruled right before Constantine,
was named Diocletian.
And when Diocletian went to the oracle of Apollo, the oracle told him that they were
unable to receive clear instructions from the gods because their connection was
being hindered by the presence of these Christians who were described by the
oracle as the impious on the earth.
So in the year 303, Diocletian issued what's called the Edict against the
Christians in which he ordered the destruction of the Christian scriptures,
Christian places of worship.
He prohibited Christians from assembling together to worship.
He had many Christians arrested and put in prison.
He had many of their homes set on fire with them inside so that many families
just perished in the fire.
He had others taken out to sea and had stones tied around their neck and thrown
into the sea.
Others were strung up and suspended over flames until they boiled to death.
And all these events are recorded in great detail in Fox's Book of the Martyrs.
And there he says, it's impossible to ascertain the numbers martyred or to
enumerate the various modes of martyrdom.
Racks, scourges, swords, daggers, crosses, spears, spears, axes,
poison, famine were made use of in various parts to dispatch the Christians.
An invention was exhausted to devise tortures against such has had no crime.
Now by the time Diocletian issued the Edict against the Christians, the Roman
Empire had already been divided ten years prior.
And he's the one who had issued the order.
And so Rome was divided in more ways than one, geographically as well as
religiously.
So that's the environment that Constantine grew up under.
And he grew up trained as a soldier fighting in the armies of Rome.
And as a good soldier, he understood the importance of having his men behind him
together in agreement.
So he was a first-hand eyewitness to the challenges that were faced by the Empire
over this issue.
So then in the year 306, at the age of 34, Constantine became emperor over one of the
four Roman kingdoms.
And five years later, he saw one of the other emperors, Galerius, admit publicly
that his attempts to stop the Christians through persecution was a dismal failure.
And so that was in the year 311.
And in that same year, Galerius, after having many Christians put to death,
he was struck down with an illness that was described as a very painful illness.
And he was in such pain that he even called on the Christians to please pray
for him.
But he died of his sickness after just 16 days.
And it was the next year, in 312, that Constantine was engaged in a battle
against one of the other Roman emperors, Maxentius.
And it's called the Battle of Milvian Bridge.
And it was during that battle that Constantine, many years later,
13 years later, claimed that he had had a vision.
And in the vision, he claims he saw a cross up in the sky, and he heard God say,
in this sign you shall conquer.
Now, there's some very big problems with his testimony, because first of all,
no one had ever heard a single word about it until 13 years later.
In the year 325, Constantine was facing many challenges of trying to keep control
over this Christian influence that was growing stronger and stronger.
And so in that year, he sent out word, an invitation, to 1800 leaders of
Christian churches who were called bishops.
And 300 of them accepted his invitation and made the trip to Rome and met with
him, where he attempted to take control over the Christian world, putting himself
at the head of it.
Now, I think it's very odd that at this time, when he's trying to present himself
as a candidate to be the leader of all the Christian churches, that at that very
time, right prior to that council meeting, he comes up with this testimony that he
has his scribe record for him, a man named Eusebius.
So it was clearly to Constantine's advantage at that time to come up with a
testimony to claim that he also was a Christian that would then qualify him to
be the leader over all the other Christians.
So that's point number one, that I think is a glaringly big problem for his
testimony.
But the second thing is his own testimony, which he had carved in stone, telling the
stories of his conquests.
Some three years after his supposed conversion in 312, in the year 315,
he had constructed what was called the Arch of Constantine.
And this arch has carved into it the stories of his military victories.
And what's really interesting about the arch is that it has not one single
reference to any kind of Christian symbol.
There are no crosses found anywhere in any of the statues.
Yet he claims to have had this dramatic conversion in which he was told,
in this sign you will conquer.
So if the sign of the cross was the key to his military victories, why in his own
testimony would he omit it and any reference to it while including references
to his pagan gods?
Right on top of the arch was the god Apollo.
And carved into other parts of the arch were references giving honor to other
pagan gods.
So all throughout the arch, we see him giving honor to his pagan gods while
making not one single mention of anything Christian.
Now that arch still stands today in Rome.
It's near the Colosseum.
And so to this very day, his own testimony, which is carved into that
stone, testifies against him as being a true convert to Christianity.
And so that's the second reason why he's a true convert.
And the third reason why I do not believe his conversion ever happened.
But there's a lot more evidence because well into the later years of his life,
in the year 330, five years after the Council of Nicaea, he has another monument
constructed to honor the god Apollo.
It's called the Column of Constantine.
And at the top of it stands Apollo.
But instead of Apollo's face, he puts his own face on the statue.
Now at the base of that column, there was a little storage compartment.
And in there, he had a wooden statue of the pagan goddess Pallas Athena.
And along with that little statue, he had some Christian relics such as
little wooden pieces that were supposedly pieces of the cross.
So there you have a great example near the end of his life.
He's still giving honor to the pagan gods, and he's just added this Christian relic
in the mix as if it's just a way of covering the bases to include all the
gods.
And you know as the Romans had this pantheon of gods, they were very used to
having lots of gods.
So why not just add one more god to the mix, and that way you've got them all
covered.
That's what it looks like Constantine did.
There's no evidence of a genuine conversion.
Christians don't build monuments to pagan gods.
Christians don't just add their god to the mix of their other existing gods.
Christians receive the one true god and center their whole life around a personal
relationship with him.
There's no room to have all those other gods if there's a true conversion.
And that brings me to my last point of concern about Constantine's testimony,
is that he doesn't mention any conversion of the inner man.
He doesn't mention any kind of relationship, personal relationship with
God through Jesus Christ.
Matter of fact, he never even mentions the name of Jesus Christ.
All he said was in this supposed vision is that in this sign you will conquer.
And this is exactly the kind of thing that was popular throughout the pagan culture.
They were superstitious.
They believed in the power of objects, the power of relics to deliver them and
give them some kind of supernatural favor.
And it's idolatry.
What he did was he made Christianity into a form of idolatry.
He actually perverted the meaning of the cross as if it's some kind of a relic that
would give him power.
Almost like in the Lord of the Rings movie, whoever possesses the ring has this
great power.
And that's how it is in Babylon.
The kingdom of Babylon is always focused on the visible realm because they cannot
see the invisible realm.
And that's why they have all these pagan gods that are connected to things in the
visible realm.
It's either the sun or the moon or the planets or the stars or something in the
physical realm because that's where they focus their attention.
And just think about what a joke it was for him to convene this council of Nicaea.
He sent out the invitation to 1,800 bishops and less than 20% of them showed
up, only 300.
And that makes a lot of sense because these people understood this is the
emperor of the empire that kills Christians, tortures Christians.
And now they receive this invitation from Brother Constantine who wants to come and
have fellowship with them.
Can you imagine how they must have felt when they're meeting together with him to
discuss church doctrines?
I mean, who's going to debate with him when he could instantly have them put to
death?
I mean, the whole thing is just beyond absurd to think that they're going to have
a legitimate meeting to decide on the future of Christian doctrine.
So the only one that had anything to gain from this was Constantine because he put
himself in the position that he wanted to be in which all the Christians were now
accountable to him as the head of the church.
I mean, it was a downright devilish thing to do.
Yet to this very day, the Roman Catholic Church claims that their kingdom,
their empire, had a change of heart with the conversion of Constantine.
And from that time on, they were a Christian empire.
But if that was true, then there should be evidence of that even after the life of
Constantine.
But instead, what we see is the Roman emperors who followed after him continued
to persecute and put to death the Christians.
For example, 23 years after the death of Constantine, Julian became emperor and he
renounced Christianity and banned Christians from having any positions
within the Roman government.
And he made a concerted effort to unify paganism.
And I want to read a paragraph from Fox's book of the martyrs regarding the events
of the year 363, which was the year after Julian became emperor.
So now this is 24 years after the life of Constantine.
It says, In Palestine many were burnt alive, others were dragged by their feet
through the streets naked until they expired.
Some were scalded to death, many were stoned, great numbers had their brains
beaten out with clubs.
In Alexandria, Egypt innumerable were the martyrs who suffered by the sword,
by burning, by crucifixion, and by stoning.
In Eruthisa several were ripped open, and corn was put in their bellies so the
swine were brought in to feed on the corn which was in them.
And in devouring the grain, they likewise devoured the entrails of the martyrs.
And in Thrace, Aemilianus was burned at the stake, and Domitius was murdered in a
cave, whither he had fled for refuge.
Now that was during the reign of Julian, and I wish I could say that he was just an
odd man out, and that after him, Rome behaved themselves, but that's not
the case.
The evidence shows persistent, continuing, ongoing murder of Christians
and Jews for hundreds of years.
In fact, it has never stopped, it has continued to this day.
And that's the whole point that I wanted to bring out, that this Roman Empire has
been anti-Christ from the beginning, and has continued all the way through.
It is true that in the year 380, Emperor Theodosius issued what's called
the Edict of Thessalonica, which made Christianity the state church of the Roman
Empire.
So yes, there was this move made to put on a Christian face, but the evidence of
their actions across many centuries afterwards shows that they never became
Christians.
And in the same way that they continued persecuting the Christians, they continued
also persecuting the Jews, burning down their synagogues, exiling them from their
nations, mass murdering them in many different places over many different
years.
But you know, to this very day, the Roman Catholic Church puts forth this
story that their empire converted to Christianity with the conversion of
Constantine.
Their whole story hinges on his testimony, which has all sorts of serious flaws in
it.
And they even commissioned an artist, Raphael, to paint his story on the walls
of the Vatican.
But by the time he painted that, it was 1,200 years after the life of
Constantine.
But they still keep it on the Vatican walls because they have to have this
narrative.
They have to have this conversion.
They have to have something to show that they are who they claim to be.
But even though they've got a beautiful painting telling the whole story right
there on the walls of the Vatican, it doesn't make it true.
And they have another story painted on the walls of the Vatican, and that is called
the Donation of Constantine, in which supposedly Constantine deferred power on
the Bishop of Rome at that time, who's known as Pope Sylvester I.
And so there's this painting that shows Constantine deferring power to the Pope,
which he needed that for credibility, just like Constantine needed credibility
with the bishops coming to his meeting for the Council of Nicaea.
But did you know that this whole story about the Donation of Constantine,
even on Wikipedia today, identifies it as a fraudulent, fabricated story that never
happened?
I mean, it's a historical proven fact that it was a fraudulent document that told
this story because Pope Stephen needed the credibility that would come from something
like that.
And so what we see is a consistent pattern of behavior by the Roman Catholic Church
to give themselves credibility where they need credibility to pull off the claims
that they're trying to make because they actually have no legal right, no real
authority.
So the only authority that they can come up with is false.
It's all based on lies.
Instead, what they've done is exactly what Constantine did.
They took the Christian faith and paganized it.
They just adopted Christian language to continue their pagan practices.
So whereas they had always worshipped these pagan goddesses of fertility like
Ishtar and Venus and Artemis and Demeter and Diana and all of those, they just
continued the same story with Mary and baby Jesus.
And whereas before, the child was Horus, who is a type of the Antichrist,
whose left eye is shown on the back of every United States dollar bill.
It's called the all-seeing eye, the all-seeing eye of Horus.
This is the child that they honor through their statues, through their adoration of
Mary.
And this is why they have so many false teachings, unscriptural teachings,
that try to exalt Mary to this godlike status.
And so the Roman Catholic Church has just continued in the ways of Constantine in
paganizing Christianity, not honoring the spirit of Christianity or believing the
word of God in any way, shape, or form, never repenting humbly before
God, but instead continuing to do their way and follow their pagan gods.
They did the same thing with the communion elements, where Jesus instructed us to
remember him as we partake of the bread and the wine.
But what they've done is taken those elements and required their followers to
believe in what they call transubstantiation, which means that the
bread literally becomes the physical body of Jesus, and the wine literally becomes
the blood of Jesus.
And that is an ancient pagan practice where the priests would eat the flesh and
drink the blood of their pagan god, Osiris.
And it continued through the centuries.
It was a very popular practice in the Roman Empire in a religion called
Mithrasism, where they worshiped the god Mithras.
And they performed the exact same ritual.
So they just took those same practices and now they've made it Christian.
And there are many other examples of how they have paganized the Jewish and the
Christian faith.
For example, the calendar.
They threw out the Hebrew calendar.
That God has referred to throughout the scriptures.
Total disregard and total disrespect for his word.
And they just replaced it with their own Roman calendar, which we all live by
today.
And in that process, they Romanized the celebration dates for Christian holidays,
such as Christmas.
December 25th was a date that they honored their pagan god, Mithras.
And it was on that day that they would give gifts to one another to celebrate and
honor Mithras.
And so they just completely paganized the Lord's birthday.
And they did the same thing with the celebration of the Lord's resurrection,
so that the focus is shifted to Easter bunnies and Easter eggs.
And we call it Easter because it's named after the pagan goddess of fertility,
whose name is Ishtar.
And just like Constantine, they place all the emphasis on physical objects in the
visible realm.
And that's why they have this adoration for all sorts of religious relics.
Fragments of pieces of the wood that come from the cross, they claim.
Fragments of the bones of saints, or holy water that comes from the Holy
Land.
Or rosary beads that you have to hold onto when you're praying.
Or crucifixes that they place on the wall.
Or statues of saints that they keep in their possession, little statues or large
statues.
But these things are like idols, and they're all in the physical realm
because that's the way pagans operate.
And so what happened was, by the year 476, the Roman Empire, historians will tell us,
it came to an end.
But yet, it did not come to an end, because it was just the beginning of this
new form of Rome operating as the papacy, under the control of a new kind of emperor
called the Pope, whose commands were just as mandatory as any command of the
emperors ever was.
And the men who occupied this new office of Pope used the exact same title that the
Roman emperors had used for many centuries, which is called the Pontifex
Maximus, which is Latin, and it means the Great Bridge.
And what it's referring to is they are calling themselves the Great Bridge
between God and man, which is a complete blasphemous statement, because the Bible
tells us that there is only one mediator between God and man, and that is the Lord
Jesus Christ.
So we can have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
We do not need this Great Bridge, this self-appointed bridge.
But by calling themselves the exact same name that the emperors used, it shows that
the empire did not stop.
And to this day, they call themselves by that title.
Every Pope calls himself Pontifex Maximus.
And in the same way that the Roman emperors wore crowns on their head,
so do the Popes.
They have these very ornate crowns that they wear in the tradition of Rome.
And so all these things are just examples showing that this Roman kingdom is alive
and well today.
So contrary to what historians tell us, contrary to the popular narrative we've
all been indoctrinated with for all of our life, the Roman Empire never went away.
What happened was, over the next three centuries, the Popes decreed what they
call canon law, which is the law according to the Church.
And this canon law then replaced what had been Roman law.
And so initially, the Popes had limited influence, but they exercised their
influence to try to bring, as Constantine did, to try to bring all the Christian
churches under their control.
And they used threats of excommunication for anyone who dared to defy them.
And they used this same role as the Pontifex Maximus to intimidate leaders of
other nations and of other cities.
And in this way, they gradually increased their influence and brought more and more
areas into submission to their canon law.
Until finally, by the year 800, they initiated what became known as the
Holy Roman Empire, where the ruler of the empire had to be crowned by the Pope.
So that put the Holy Roman Empire to the Pope at the ultimate pinnacle of all the
world government, with everyone else under him.
So it was a genius idea on their part, because they succeeded in exalting
themselves to the highest place above all the thrones of the earth.
So I think this is a good place to stop for today, because this brings us to the
start of the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted for about 1,000 years.
And in tomorrow's program, I'll explain how the end of that empire marked a huge
transformation in the Roman Catholic Church.
And it was a pivotal point in history that directly impacts our lives today.
And that's why I believe it's so vitally important that we understand what
happened, because even as that Holy Roman Empire was extremely dangerous to anybody
who had a genuine faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, what came out of it at the end was
something far more dreadful, far more terrifying, something that perfectly
matches the description given by the prophet Daniel when he described the
fourth beast in Daniel chapter 7.
So thanks for joining me today, and I hope to be back again soon with
another program.
Until then, so long.