🇺🇸 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖑𝖑 ♱

For nearly three centuries, the Roman emperors sought to extinguish Christianity. Yet the more fiercely they persecuted the Church, the more remarkably she endured. From Nero to Diocletian, successive waves of persecution swept across the Roman Empire. Christians were stripped of their possessions, driven from their occupations, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. Their churches and schools were destroyed. Their assemblies were forbidden under penalty of death. Some were thrown to wild beasts. Others were burned alive, torn apart, or subjected to the most dreadful instruments of torture. Wilhelmus à Brakel, in his commentary on Revelation, describes persecutions so terrible that the blood of the martyrs formed pools, rivers ran red, and entire Christian communities were slaughtered. The persecution reached its terrible climax under Diocletian, whose imperial campaign against Christianity began in AD 303. Church buildings were demolished, Christian worship was suppressed, and believers were commanded to sacrifice to the pagan gods. After centuries of bloodshed, the Church appeared to be approaching extermination. Then God raised up Constantine the Great. In AD 312, Constantine marched against Maxentius, defeated his army at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, and entered Rome victorious. In AD 313, Constantine and Licinius proclaimed religious toleration, bringing relief to Christians throughout their territories. But the struggle for the empire was not yet finished. Licinius, ruler of the East, eventually became Constantine's formidable enemy. In AD 324, Constantine marched against him, defeated his armies, and secured dominion over the whole Roman Empire. The persecuting empire had been conquered. Christianity emerged triumphant. The imperial decrees against Christianity were overturned. Confiscated property was restored. Christians assembled openly, built churches, and received appointments to civil and military offices. The religion that Roman emperors had sought to destroy now enjoyed the protection and patronage of the emperor himself. À Brakel understood this tremendous revolution as the fulfillment of the sixth seal of Revelation 6, in which the powers of pagan Rome were shaken and brought low. He also identified Constantine with the man-child of Revelation 12, raised up in God's providence to deliver the Church from the fury of her persecutors. Consider the astonishing reversal. The emperors had demanded that Christians sacrifice to their gods or perish. Generations of martyrs had refused. Their property had been plundered, their churches destroyed, and their blood poured out. Yet Rome had utterly failed to extinguish the Christian faith. Now the emperor himself professed Christianity, the Church worshipped publicly, and the pagan establishment was losing its ancient supremacy. The empire that had hunted the Church was now ruled by a man who defended her. Such was the extraordinary triumph of Christianity under Constantine the Great, and such was the providence of God in preserving His Church against the mightiest empire on earth.

King Alfred was a noble Christian King. He divided the day and night into three parts, and spent 8 hours in study, 8 hours in prayer, and 8 hours resting and dealing with the affairs of the Kingdom. He was distinguished as a grammarian, philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and musician. Having defeated the Danes, he set himself to translate Christian books in libraries that the Danes had burned down. Alfred translated Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, and Gregory the Great's Pastoral Rule into the native tongue so that his people understood it. He was translating David's Psalms before his death. He stirred up a love of learning among the English people. He governed for over 29 years. John Foxe described him as "a rare and profitable example of other Christen kings and Princes, for them to follow." May the Lord raise up more King Alfreds.

The objection rests upon a fundamental misunderstanding of Scripture. When Christ declared, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30), he was not offering an exhaustive enumeration of the persons of the Godhead. He was declaring his essential unity with the Father. Jerome Zanchi, in On the Incarnation of the Son of God (Vol. I, p. 33), explains that the Jews understood this declaration as Christ making himself God, equal to the Father in divine power. But why suppose that naming the Father excludes the Holy Spirit? Zanchi explicitly refutes this very principle of interpretation in Volume I, page 104. He quotes Augustine who writes: “When one of the three is named in some work, should the whole Trinity be understood to act? Indeed it should, and this can be confirmed by examples.” He observes that Scripture frequently attributes divine works to one person without excluding the others. John 1:3 attributes creation to the Son. Does that exclude the Father and Holy Spirit? John 3 attributes regeneration to the Holy Spirit. Does that exclude the Father and Son? John 6:44 attributes the drawing of sinners to the Father. Does that mean the Son and Holy Spirit do not draw? Certainly not. Zanchi states the governing principle: “The external works of the Trinity are undivided” (Vol. I, p. 101). Moreover, the assertion that Jesus never taught the Trinity ignores his own words. In John 14:16, Christ declares that he will pray to the Father, who will send another Comforter. Here are the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, personally distinguished. And in Matthew 28:19, Christ explicitly commands baptism “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Notice that Christ says “name,” singular, while expressly naming three distinct persons. Zanchi explains that the divine essence is one and indivisible, wholly possessed by the Father, wholly possessed by the Son, and wholly possessed by the Holy Spirit (Vol. I, pp. 107–108). The Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Holy Spirit; yet all three possess the one divine essence. Therefore, Christ's declaration that he and the Father are one establishes his deity without denying the deity of the Holy Spirit. An omission in one particular statement does not constitute a denial of what Scripture expressly teaches elsewhere. The Trinity was not invented because Christ neglected to teach it. Rather, the Church articulated its doctrine because it was compelled to confess everything Scripture reveals about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.