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10 Hope of Israel Ministries BIBLE Correspondence Course Lesson 39

slanders of enemies!
The historian Gibbon (Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire)
candidly states: “The scanty materials
of ecclesiastical history seldom enable
us to dispel the cloud that hangs over
the first age of the church.”
For nearly a century Church his-
tory is blank! Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
(The Story of the Christian Church)
calls this period, just after Acts, the
“Age of Shadows.”
16. Then, in I Timothy 4:1-3,
what do we read?
COMMENT: Hurlbut continues
Vatican City -- the headquarters of the great FALSE by saying, “...of all the periods in the
religious system pictured by the Black Horse. church’s history, it is the one about
which we know the least...For fifty
taught, attempted innovations, and fashioned years after St. Paul’s life A CURTAIN
religion ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN HANGS OVER THE CHURCH, THROUGH
LIKING.” WHICH WE STRIVE VAINLY TO LOOK; and
There were conspirators! Men masquer- when at last it rises about 120 A.D. with the
ading as YEHOVAH’s ministers -- but who writings of the earliest CHURCH FATHERS,
were wolves in sheep’s clothing! we find A CHURCH in many respects VERY
Since the new inventions and ideas of DIFFERENT from that in the days of St. Peter
these clever men required PROOF -- not to be and St. Paul.”
found in the writings of the apostles -- “recourse Was this -- when the curtain arose --
was had to falsehoods and impositions...When really the same Ecclesia?
asked where they had learned what they so con- Absolutely NOT!
fidently taught, some produced FICTITIOUS The True Ecclesia of YEHOVAH God
BOOKS under the names of Abraham, Zoroa- had faded from view! ANOTHER church was on
ster, and Christ, of his Apostles; some pretended stage!
to have derived their principles from a secret 17. The apostle Peter also mentions the
doctrine taught by Christ.” beginning of the black horse’s ride. II Peter
Had the True Ecclesia gone wrong? Or 2:1-3.
was this ANOTHER, a DIFFERENT and COMMENT: As the early apostles
FALSE church, that was being founded by men passed from the scene, the VISIBLE church
who were tools of Satan the Devil? began to accommodate itself to many of the
A telltale clue is found in the complete Hellenistic philosophies and doctrines then in
absence of historical connecting links. A great vogue in the Roman world. Some felt such a
yawning gap -- an unbridgeable chasm -- lies maneuver was essential for the future survival of
between the APOSTOLIC Ecclesia the Messiah Christianity.
founded and the earliest beginnings of today’s So the process of Hellenization began in
professing Christian churches. Nearly all the earnest. VISIBLE Christianity took on a com-
writings of the Ecclesia in the years after 70 A.D. pletely DIFFERENT form as pagan Greek
have perished. Only prophecy remains -- and the elements flooded into the visible church.

The Black Horse of Revelation 6