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Series Code: SEM
Program Code: SEM000001A
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00:01 male announcer: The world, forever changed.
00:04 His legacy, an empire reaching across centuries. 00:08 His name... 00:11 Constantine. 00:15 "Shadow Empire." 00:31 Shawn Boonstra: This is the city of Nis 00:33 in the heart of Serbia. 00:34 It's a very old town, one of the oldest in Europe. 00:38 In ancient times the Romans called it Naissus 00:40 and it was here some 1700 years ago that 00:43 a baby was born under a cloud of illegitimacy 00:47 to a very humble and insignificant village girl. 00:50 That baby would grow up to completely transform 00:53 the whole planet. 00:55 In fact, you and are still living under the shadow 00:58 of his life. 00:59 He has altered the way you think, the way you live, 01:02 and probably the way you believe. 01:07 And this is the ancient land of Israel where another 01:10 even better known baby was born some 2,000 years ago 01:14 to another humble village girl. 01:18 And that baby completely changed the planet undeniably 01:23 to an extent unmatched by any other child in history. 01:27 And the paths of these two incredible children 01:30 were destined to cross in ways that history 01:32 has clearly recorded but most of us have forgotten 01:36 and believe me, our amnesia hasn't done us any favors. 01:43 ♪♪♪ 01:55 Shawn: It was 271 A.D. 01:56 and a tired Roman military tribune 01:58 by the name of Flavius Constantius 02:01 was leading his men back from a battle with the Sarmatians, 02:05 a large confederation of ancient Persians that had 02:08 slowly been making their way westward for centuries. 02:12 Eventually with the help of Germanic barbarians 02:14 like the Goths, they started pushing their way 02:17 into Roman territory, something the empire could not allow. 02:31 Shawn: And on his way back from fighting the Sarmatians, 02:33 Flavius Constantius stopped here in what is now 02:36 the modern day city of Nis in a village much like this 02:39 to get some rest. 02:41 His men spent the night out in the fields but because he was 02:44 a commanding officer, he got to stay in a village inn 02:48 where he could get a great meal, a good night sleep, 02:51 and unfortunately something else that soldiers 02:54 sometimes go looking for when they come to town. 02:57 He wanted a little company for the evening. 03:02 According to the story told by an ancient great monk, Flavius 03:05 asked the local innkeeper to find him a companion. 03:09 What usually happened in those days is someone would go 03:11 and fetch a village widow but that night, the innkeeper 03:15 dispensed with the tradition because he was deeply impressed 03:18 by the stature and bearing of this Roman soldier 03:21 and he did the unthinkable. 03:23 He sent for his 16-year-old daughter. 03:27 Her name, Helena, and she would go on to become 03:29 one of the most famous women in history. 03:37 The next morning, when the sun came through the bedroom window, 03:41 Flavius suddenly worried that maybe he had offended 03:43 Apollo the sun god so he quickly packed up and went out 03:46 to the fields to his men, but just before he left, 03:51 he gave money to the innkeeper and then he handed him 03:55 something else, an object that would later prove 03:58 to be very important. 04:02 He gave the innkeeper his tribunal cape which had a buckle 04:07 with his initials and his military rank. 04:11 "Keep the girl pure," he said, "and if by chance 04:13 she gives birth to a child, 04:15 protect the child as the apple of your eye." 04:19 And then he left town and, of course, the girl was pregnant 04:23 and she gave birth to a child and named him Constantine 04:27 which means little Constantius. 04:30 He was named after his father, 04:32 but his father had no idea he existed. 04:40 In fact, his father went to live where modern day Budapest now is 04:43 and from there at the age of 33, he was suddenly summoned by 04:47 the Roman emperor to become the governor of Dalmatia, 04:51 a region in modern day Croatia. 04:54 Now that appointment was a huge deal because Dalmatia 04:57 was a key Roman territory where the empire controlled 05:00 the flow of trade between east and west. 05:04 If you became the governor of Dalmatia, 05:07 it meant you were on your way up. 05:09 Now that appointment also sealed the fate of Helena 05:12 and little Constantine because, of course, 05:14 she was nothing but a humble peasant 05:17 and the father of the boy was now at the top 05:20 of Roman society. 05:22 He was now famous enough that she probably knew exactly where 05:26 he was but ancient Roman civilization 05:29 was not exactly egalitarian. 05:32 She had no way to contact the father 05:35 because that would never be allowed. 05:40 That should have been the end of the story, just another baby 05:44 born to another peasant girl and nobody cares except that 05:48 almost a decade later, something remarkable happens. 05:52 Another group of Roman soldiers stops at the village inn in Nis 05:56 for the night and they found little Constantine, 05:58 now 9 years old, 06:00 teasing their horses and that made them angry, 06:04 so they started to hit the boy. 06:07 And his mom heard the commotion and came running into the barn. 06:09 "Stop," she said. 06:11 "Don't you know who that is? 06:12 You're hitting the governor's son." 06:14 "Do you take us for fools?" they said. 06:19 "I swear to the gods, I'm telling the truth," she said. 06:22 "When Flavius Constantius was just a tribune, 06:24 he slept here and I became pregnant." 06:28 male: What proof do you have of such a thing? 06:29 Shawn: "If you want proof, I can give it to you." 06:33 That's when she pulled out the cape. 06:35 male: F.C., Flavius Constantius. 06:39 Shawn: Imagine the panic those men must have felt 06:40 when they saw the initials, Flavius Constantius, 06:44 governor of Dalmatia. 06:48 The good news is they did the right thing, they went 06:51 and told the governor he had a son living in Naissus. 06:55 The governor was delighted. 06:57 He sent for the boy immediately. 07:00 Helena was now 26 years old and the reunion went 07:03 as well as you might imagine. 07:05 She was welcomed into the governor's house with open arms. 07:09 There was only one problem, there was no way 07:12 Flavius Constantius could marry her because she was a peasant. 07:16 And it wasn't because Flavius thought he was too good 07:18 for Helena. 07:19 In fact, he himself had been raised by shepherds in a village 07:22 just a few miles north of this location. 07:25 The problem was that society didn't allow it. 07:30 She could go and live in his house, 07:31 but she could not be his wife. 07:34 It turns out that young Constantine and his mother 07:36 were not a fit for high Roman society. 07:44 Neither was that other baby, born 300 years earlier in 07:47 Bethlehem to another young mother who didn't have a husband 07:51 when she found herself pregnant. 07:53 Her name, of course, was Mary, and the child was Jesus. 07:58 And as the whole world knows, he was cruelly put to death 08:01 on an instrument of torture actually concocted by 08:04 earlier pagan societies but perfected into a grizzly 08:08 sadistic science by none other than the Roman Empire. 08:13 The followers of Jesus were not particularly welcome 08:16 in the city of Jerusalem because they were perceived 08:18 to be a threat to the traditional religion of Moses, 08:21 and in time, the burgeoning movement of Christians 08:25 also found themselves at odds with the entire Roman Empire. 08:33 ♪♪♪ 08:37 Shawn: This is a bridge built some 60 years before the birth 08:41 of Christ and wouldn't you know it, 08:43 the bridge is still in service today. 08:45 Now, you want to pay attention to bridges as we unfold the rest 08:49 of our story because they'll prove to be very important. 08:53 This bridge is a remarkable example of just how skilled 08:56 the Romans were. 08:58 They managed to build an international infrastructure, 09:01 one that held together an empire made of up 09:03 of hundreds of different cultures and nationalities. 09:07 You had the Jews to the east, the Barbarians to the north, 09:11 and the ancient civilizations of Greece, Persia, 09:14 and north Africa, all in one empire that somehow 09:18 was remarkably stable and peaceful. 09:23 After Augustus Caesar's victory at the battle of Actium 09:26 in 27 B.C., the Roman Empire 09:28 became very stable and predictable. 09:31 It was a good place to live to the point where people 09:34 spoke of Pax Romana. 09:36 You've probably heard that expression, 09:38 it means the peace of Rome. 09:41 From northern Europe to north Africa, 09:43 from Spain to the Middle East, 09:45 you could count on Roman water, Roman highways, 09:48 Roman courts, and Roman law. 09:51 Even though the people were conquered subjects, most of them 09:54 still liked living in the world of the Romans 09:57 because it was a great place to live. 10:05 Shawn: It was the person of the emperor that served 10:08 as a focal point for unity. 10:10 Conquered people had almost absolute freedom of conscience. 10:14 They could go on worshiping whatever god they wanted. 10:16 They could stick with the religion of their ancestors 10:19 just as long as they also acknowledged the deity 10:22 of the Roman emperor. 10:24 He was considered the embodiment of Roma, the goddess of Rome. 10:29 Now, in reality, nobody actually thought the emperor was 10:32 a divine being, especially if you happened to grow up 10:35 with the guy but during the reign of Augustus Caesar, 10:38 the unity, the hard won peace of the empire 10:42 became so important that emperor worship 10:44 became a symbol of national unity. 10:48 Everybody knew he wasn't really a god, but you offered him 10:51 a little worship anyway to prove your allegiance 10:53 to the gods of Rome and to the whole empire. 11:01 All you really had to do, especially in later years, 11:04 was offer this tiny, little pinch of incense 11:06 to the emperor just once in a while, 11:09 then you could go back to life as normal. 11:12 Essentially, you barely had to acknowledge 11:14 the deity of the emperor. 11:17 Now, that was required for everybody except the Jews who 11:20 had a national exemption, and how did they get that exemption? 11:24 Well, they had proven so helpful to Julius Caesar during this 11:27 conquest that they got a formal legal excuse 11:32 from those kinds of regulations. 11:34 They didn't have to acknowledge the emperor as a god, 11:36 they just had to promise to pray for him 11:39 and for the health of the empire. 11:41 And, of course, given all the options, 11:43 that was something they were quite happy to do. 11:46 Now, the Romans had a word for the Jewish faith, 11:48 they called it a religio. 11:50 It's where we get the word "religion" and a religio 11:53 was a national faith, a religion that actually defined 11:57 the whole nation itself. 12:01 In the very beginning, the followers of Jesus were also 12:05 considered a religio because as far as the average Roman 12:08 could tell, there was really no difference between 12:11 Jews and Christians. 12:13 Christians were just one more sect of Jews. 12:16 But then a few years went by and a radical separation 12:19 started taking place between the two groups. 12:22 As time went by, Christians were no longer called a religio, 12:27 a national religion, now they were called superstitio. 12:31 It's where we get the word "superstition." 12:34 Suddenly, Christians had no more legal exemption and they too 12:38 were required to acknowledge the deity of the Roman emperor. 12:47 ♪♪♪ 13:04 Shawn: A little more than 200 years after Christ, 13:07 right here in the city of Rome, there was this great example 13:10 of the problem that early Christians faced. 13:13 There were probably about 30,000 of them living in the city 13:17 at the time and the emperor Trajan Decius passed a law 13:21 saying that every male citizen had to buy a sacrificial animal, 13:25 bring it to the temple for ritual cooking, publicly consume 13:29 some of the meat, and then offer some wine to the genius, 13:34 or the guiding spirit of the emperor. 13:36 In other words, they had to recognize the emperor as a god. 13:41 And if you did that, if you performed the rituals, 13:44 you got a signed certificate but if you didn't, 13:47 you were considered a traitor to the empire. 13:57 At other times and with other emperors, all you really had 14:00 to do is just offer that tiny pinch of incense, 14:03 a token ritual that proved you were loyal. 14:06 Now, for the most part, Christians didn't have a problem 14:09 with being loyal to government because their Scriptures 14:12 actually taught them to be good citizens but they could not, 14:16 they would not participate in a Roman religious ritual 14:20 because they were monotheistic just like their Jewish cousins. 14:23 They acknowledged the existence of just one God and that God 14:27 they said had come to earth in human form. 14:30 He'd been put to death on a Roman cross 14:33 and then he rose from the dead. 14:36 That same God in human flesh would come again to judge 14:39 the living and the dead and then he would set up 14:42 a kingdom of his own. 14:49 So, now the Christians were perceived as a clear threat 14:51 to Pax Romano. 14:53 They were an unstable element. 14:56 They clearly served a different king which might have been fine 14:59 as long as Caesar was still at the top of the heap. 15:02 The problem was Christians only had one king and they spoke 15:06 about the day when their king would overthrow 15:09 every other empire. 15:11 These people were conversant in the ancient prophecies of Daniel 15:15 which spoke of a time when Messiah's king would destroy 15:17 every single human kingdom and replace them for all time. 15:22 Their Jesus was not just Messiah, he was not just 15:26 the Son of God, he was the King of kings and Lord of lords. 15:31 Here's how the prophet Daniel described him, 15:35 "Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, 15:39 that all people's nations and languages should serve Him. 15:42 His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass 15:46 away, and His kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed." 15:58 Shawn: It's not hard to see why the Romans weren't keen 16:01 on this brand-new set. 16:03 It didn't help that Christians were distancing themselves 16:06 from some of the day-to-day activities 16:08 the average Roman enjoyed. 16:10 For example, Christians weren't keen on Roman entertainment 16:14 because it was so violent. 16:16 From what I understand, historically speaking, sometimes 16:19 when a Roman play called for a death scene, condemned prisoners 16:23 were fully murdered right on stage to make it seem more 16:27 realistic and, of course, Christians weren't interested 16:30 in watching that kind of stuff. 16:32 They served a Creator God, a God of love and redemption. 16:36 Then there was the issue of healthcare, 16:38 a lot of the hospitals were dedicated to 16:40 the pagan gods of healing, which wouldn't have been 16:43 a huge problem except that sometimes the priest 16:47 of the serpent god would actually come right into 16:50 your hospital room and involve you in his pagan rituals. 16:54 Public education also posed a bit of a problem because 16:57 the value system taught by Roman educators was essentially 17:01 at odds with Christian belief and if you sent your kids 17:04 to a Roman school, they would be subjected to pagan religion. 17:09 They would learn different theories about 17:11 philosophical truth or the origins of the human race 17:14 and the meaning of life. 17:16 And while Christians have never really shied away from other 17:20 people's ideas, they didn't want to expose their kids 17:22 to that stuff at a young age. 17:28 ♪♪♪ 17:42 In the 2nd century, the Emperor Trajan, 17:44 the one who actually built this famous marketplace, 17:47 he sent a new governor to Asia Minor 17:50 to rule a region called Bithynia and in one town 17:54 in that region, there were people complaining 17:56 about the Christians. 17:57 What was the complaint? 17:59 Well, the local butchers weren't selling enough meat, 18:02 so how could that be the Christians' fault? 18:05 Well, a lot of the meat was earmarked for sacrifices 18:08 to the pagan gods and the influence of Christianity 18:11 had supposedly put a massive dent in sales so the butchers 18:16 blamed the Christians for their woes. 18:22 Now, at first, the new governor, a guy by the name 18:24 of the Pliny the Younger, he didn't see a problem. 18:28 He wrote back to the emperor and said, 18:30 "I don't know what all the fuss is about. 18:32 I still see all kinds of meat for sale in the market. 18:34 I think those butchers are exaggerating." 18:37 But, you know, facts seldom matter in a world where people 18:41 want a scapegoat so even though the accusation against 18:44 the Christians had little substance, 18:46 Pliny executed a few of them anyway just to keep 18:50 the merchants happy, and he was actually happy to do that 18:54 because he found Christians inflexible, 18:57 unwilling to compromise on certain principles. 19:00 All across the empire, suddenly there were these anti-Christian 19:04 pamphlets in circulation and the rumor mill started to fill in 19:08 blanks wherever Romans struggled to understand the new faith. 19:12 They heard about Christians who met in secret 19:15 and that was actually true. 19:17 Some of them had to meet in secret because Romans 19:20 were suspicious of any gatherings that involved 19:22 more than a few people. 19:24 They always feared that bigger groups, say more than a dozen, 19:27 might become a breeding ground for political unrest. 19:31 And, of course, large group of Christians did meet for worship 19:34 so they were immediately suspect. 19:37 Many Christians were forced to meet in secret. 19:51 Shawn: Then the general public started to hear about 19:53 the communion service where supposedly Christians 19:56 were eating human flesh and drinking human blood. 19:59 What they were doing, of course, was eating bread and drinking 20:01 wine, symbols of the body and blood of Jesus but facts 20:05 seldom matter to people who want to hear rumors. 20:08 They called those communion services agape feasts, 20:11 love feasts, so obviously they were wild orgies. 20:15 The Christians were people of low morals who ate human flesh. 20:19 They were cannibals. 20:20 And then the story started to go around, "Watch out for those 20:23 Christians, you never know when they might come 20:26 after your kids." 20:35 This is that moment in history when all those stories you heard 20:37 in school started to take place. 20:40 Christians were put to death in the arena. 20:42 Now, we don't actually know of any Christians who died here in 20:45 the Colosseum but they were put to death in other venues. 20:49 At one point, apparently Nero had Christians dipped in tar, 20:52 nailed to crosses, and then lit on fire so that he could use 20:57 them as nightlights at his games. 21:00 He wrapped them in animal skins and fed them to wild animals. 21:04 They became the outcasts of Roman society. 21:07 They did not fit in. 21:10 And then they became convenient scapegoats. 21:12 There was one occasion toward the end of the 1st century when 21:15 the city of Rome actually burned to the ground, or at least 21:18 a big part of it did. 21:21 And the day that happened, apparently the Emperor Nero 21:24 was somewhere out of town, yet people still suspected 21:27 that he might have started the fire himself in order to 21:30 make room for his projects and that's when the Christians 21:34 suddenly got the blame. 21:38 ♪♪♪ 21:54 Shawn: A rumor spread all through the city. 21:57 "We've heard that Christians believe the world will end in 22:00 fire and we think they started the fire to make their 22:02 own prophecy come true." 22:04 Again, that was an absolute distortion of what Christians 22:07 actually believed but that didn't matter. 22:10 The Christians got the blame and Nero, probably relieved 22:14 to be out of the spotlight, went after them. 22:17 From that point on, Christian leaders were persecuted 22:20 with some regularity. 22:28 Even then, the Christians weren't really on 22:30 the emperor's radar, not yet. 22:33 Some historians suggest that Nero actually blamed another 22:36 easy target, the poor, because he knew nobody 22:39 would stand up for them. 22:41 And among the poor, there were lots and lots of Christians 22:45 because from the very start, Christianity was the religion 22:49 of a poor carpenter's son. 22:51 It was a religion of outcasts, the downtrodden. 22:55 It was a movement started by a man who spent his time 22:57 with tax collectors, and lepers, and prostitutes. 23:01 In the very beginning, Christianity was not a religion 23:05 of the rich. 23:06 To use the words of the Book of Hebrews, 23:08 it was a faith for people of whom the world was not worthy. 23:14 And when poor Christians faced death, they did it so fearlessly 23:18 that people noticed. 23:20 They stood out from the other poor people and after a while, 23:24 the Christians were so notable that they became 23:27 the number-one scapegoat, 23:28 the very face of the emperor's problems. 23:31 So, you can see, Christians did not fit into the Roman Empire. 23:37 Jesus wasn't particularly welcome in the highest levels 23:40 of Roman society. 23:42 Not only was there no room for Jesus at the inn of Bethlehem, 23:46 apparently, there wasn't much room for him in 23:49 the emperor's palace either. 23:59 There were also some key philosophical objections 24:02 the Romans had to Christianity and these are really important 24:05 because they prove what Constantine was doing 24:07 and not doing in later years. 24:09 Today, some people say that Constantine invented the idea 24:13 of Christ's divinity. 24:15 I've heard people claim that that idea didn't show up 24:17 for some 300 years after Jesus. 24:20 But if you go back and read what the ancient Romans said 24:23 about Christians in the first two centuries, 24:25 it's obvious that they were worshiping Christ. 24:28 In fact, there was a harsh Roman critic, a guy by the name 24:31 of Celsus who lived in the last half of the 2nd century 24:35 and he detested the Christians. 24:37 He was a big deal. 24:39 He was very popular, so popular that Christians felt obliged 24:43 to answer his accusations. 24:46 And what exactly did Celsus hate about Christians? 24:50 Well, for starters, he hated the idea of the incarnation, 24:53 this idea that Jesus is God in human flesh. 24:56 According to Celsus, for God to change from good to bad, 25:00 from beautiful to shameful, from happiness to misfortune, 25:04 well, to him, that was unthinkable. 25:07 He didn't see God's condescension as an act of love, 25:10 he figured that the very act of God being born in Bethlehem 25:14 as a human would be far beneath the dignity of a supreme being. 25:18 Now, there was another reason he didn't like the idea 25:21 that Jesus was God. 25:23 Some prominent Roman thinkers were already moving toward 25:26 the idea of just one God and Jesus seemed like 25:30 a second God so Celsus considered worshiping Jesus 25:34 to be some kind of relapse into polytheism. 25:37 And all that business about Jesus coming back from the dead, 25:41 well it was obvious to him that can't happen. 25:46 ♪♪♪ 26:11 Shawn: In later years, another pagan philosopher by 26:13 the name of Porphyry told the Roman world that Christians 26:17 were unsophisticated simpletons that were holding back 26:20 the progress of civilization. 26:23 In Porphyry's opinion, Christians were a huge detriment 26:27 to the advancement of logic and science. 26:30 So, as you can see in the Roman world, the worth of Jesus 26:34 would have to be proved. 26:44 Just like the worth of Constantine, it wasn't until 26:48 that cape came out of storage that Helena could prove 26:51 her boy was important. 26:54 And even when they finally arrived in the governor's palace 26:57 almost 10 years after his birth, she was still an uneasy fit, 27:02 low class, peasant, unfit to be a governor's wife, 27:09 but she was good enough to be a concubine. 27:12 You see, there was this Roman law that could help make 27:15 Constantine legitimate. 27:17 They called it concubine marriage. 27:19 Now, it wasn't full-fledged Roman marriage. 27:22 This was something you could end quite easily. 27:24 Divorce was simple but it still gave the young Constantine 27:28 something, some kind of claim to legitimacy, gave him a home, 27:33 and it gave him a head start in an empire 27:36 he would eventually control. 27:41 ♪♪♪ 27:55 ♪♪♪ 28:01 announcer: Order your copy of "Shadow Empire" 28:03 from the Voice of Prophecy today. 28:05 Go to ShadowEmpireDVD.com now to get your set of this exciting 28:09 4-part series on DVD or call toll free, 1-844-822-2943. 28:16 Again that's 1-844-822-2943. 28:20 We're ready to help you Monday through Thursday 28:22 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. mountain time 28:24 or you can order anytime at ShadowEmpireDVD.com. 28:29 announcer: If you've enjoyed "Shadow Empire," 28:30 join the Voice of Prophecy for the sequel, 28:33 "A Pale Horse Rides." 28:35 We'll focus on a remarkable untold story that set the stage 28:38 for the appearance of Martin Luther. 28:40 Travel with us beyond the fringes of the Roman Empire 28:43 revealing the amazing tale of a biblical Christianity that 28:46 somehow survived the darkest hours of the Dark Ages. 28:51 ♪♪♪ 28:56 announcer: Join other churches in hosting something big. 28:58 Visit our website now. |
Revised 2017-09-19