In learning the story of God’s true church we have been looking at Europe and the British Isles, but we are now moving east of Jerusalem into a land and culture that we don’t know as much about. We will be studying the spread of Christianity in the area where our most ancient history comes from – the “cradle of civilization” – the area known as Mesopotamia. Today we call that area Iran and Iraq.

Some of our favorite Bible stories come from this area. Tradition tells us that God planted the Garden of Eden in this area and the tower of Babel was built here. Abraham left Ur, a city in this region, to obey God’s call, and Daniel and his three friends were brought here as captives to Babylon. Esther was crowned queen in the court of Ahasuerus, Ezra and Nehemiah worked for Persian monarchs, and the three wise men who came to worship baby Jesus were from this area.

After Jesus’ resurrection and return to heaven the disciples obeyed their Master’s command, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.” Matthew 28:19. On the Day of Pentecost people from many areas of the East heard the powerful preaching of Peter and they took the gospel back to their family and friends. “Only a hundred years after the death of the apostle John, the Assyrian Christians had planted their churches among the Parthians, Persians, Medes, … Turks, and Huns.” Truth Triumphant 118.

Although most of us haven’t learned much of the history of this Church in the East it was “the oldest of Christian sects; and, in their better days, were numerous through all the vast regions from Palestine to China; and they carried the gospel into China itself.” Truth Triumphant 117.  God’s Church in this part of the world has been called by many names – the Nestorian Church, the Assyrian Church, the Church of Babylon and also the Chaldean Church – but we are going to call it the Church of the East.

Tradition tells us that the Apostle Matthew worked among the Parthians who were the rulers at that time in what is now Iran and Iraq. Early Christianity had great success in preaching the gospel and changing the lives of its converts. As the holy scriptures were read, sang, or recited from memory, many of the Parthians came to know about the true God in heaven. These people who were known for their immoral lives began to follow God’s laws. Those who were not kind to the sick and dying became compassionate and loving, and those who used to take justice into their own hands by stoning thieves now turned justice over to God.

This new church in the East was permitted to grow quickly till around AD 225. Because the ruling Parthians did not have an official state religion new religions were allowed to grow and prosper under their unprejudiced rule.

This was not the way the early Christians were treated by the Roman Empire in Europe. We have heard stories of the cruelty of Nero as he would use Christians as human torches to light up his evening entertainment. To escape these persecutions the early Christians dug out homes, meeting places and cemeteries under the city of Rome. Today if you visit that city you can take a tour into the catacombs dug out of the earth and rock and see how these faithful Christians lived.

One of the reasons for the rapid spread of the gospel was due to the many well-kept roads along the silk-trade routes linking the East and the West. These roads made it easy for people to travel, both for business and also for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. “Travelers paused at the famous cities of Edessa or Arbela as they passed on their way from the Celts of Ireland to the Celts of Turkistand or Mongolia.” Truth Triumphant 121.

Christian missionaries often sacrificed the comforts of a home and family to spread the good news of salvation. We are told that many young men chose not to marry so that they would be free to go where God led them without worrying about the obligations of a wife and family. We know the gospel went to the whole world within one generation after the return of Jesus to heaven.

All of this early activity gave a solid foundation to the Church of the East before persecution began from religions like Zoroastrianism. In AD 225 persecution began as the Persians replaced the Parthian kingdom. Its rulers were devout Zoroastrians. The leaders of that religion were worried as they saw so many in their region join Christianity.  Five Christian leaders of various church districts were put to death for opposing Zoroastrianism.

Although there had been leaders over small districts before this time, it was decided that having one person over all the work in the East would help make the church a strong and coordinated organization. Papas was elected as the first person to become the head of the entire Church of the East in AD 285. He was so well thought of that churches stretching from Syria all the way to the Orient chose him to be their leader. He was known by the title “catholicos.” He was a good choice because he was respected as someone with leadership qualities and he was well educated in Persian and Syrian literature.

When Papas organized the Church of the East, its first headquarters was located in Seleucia which is only about forty miles north from the ancient city of Babylon. This city was one of two cities founded on the Tigris River. Today there is another well-known city in that area that we call Baghdad – the capital of Iraq.

Baghdad is an ancient city with museums which chronicle the history of empires which existed thousands of years before Jesus was born. This is what made the looting of the libraries and museums during the 2003 war in Iraq so devastating. Those artifacts and manuscripts were valuable as a record of this “cradle of civilization” and all its history.

A supreme head of the church was valuable in keeping all parts of the work organized. Before Papas, district leaders had to solve problems, make decisions affecting the work, raise money, and plan expansion into new territories without others to counsel with. Now the districts were under the leadership of directors and they were expected to report yearly to the catholicos. Those from more distant lands, like China, were required to report at least every six years. Successes and needs could be presented and the church was able to send workers and funds where they were most needed. This caused the gospel to be spread more quickly and with better order.

We already learned about Lucien who started a college in Antioch. He and Papas lived at the same time and were both important in keeping true Christianity strong in the East. You’ll remember that Lucien edited the manuscripts of scripture into what we call the Textus Receptus. This translation was the basis for the Authorized Version from which our King James Version Bible came from.

We know that the Peshitta – the Syriac translation – was the Bible used by the Church of the East. This translation came from the same manuscripts that Lucien used, and many people believe that it came from the school of Lucian.

An interesting story comes from India. A man tells that while he was visiting around 1812 “he saw in that land a Syrian version of the Bible which according to popular belief would date probably as far back as 325, the year of the Council of Nicaea.” Truth Triumphant 275. Having a pure translation kept the doctrines unchanged and free from corruption. The Christian church from Syria to China all had the same beliefs.

Both Papas and Lucien had to stand against the growing apostasy that was developing in the West as the Roman Church began to exercise power over all who would bow to her authority. The Roman Church “determined to bring together Easter, a yearly festival, and Sunday, a weekly holiday sacred to the worship of the sun, to make the greatest church festival of the year.” Truth Triumphant 123.

Throughout its history we see the Roman Church using pagan festivals to help keep her new members. By keeping the forms of the holidays yet “Christianizing” them, the pagan people felt comfortable in their new religion. As one writer said, “It would have been suicide for the very early Christian converts to celebrate their holy days with observances that did not coincide with celebrations that already existed. The missionaries cleverly decided to spread their religious message slowly throughout the populations by allowing them to continue to celebrate pagan feasts, but to do so in a Christian manner.

The name Easter comes from the Anglo-Saxon pagan festival Eostre (pronounced “Easter”). This was a celebration that took place on the full moon after the vernal equinox – sometime between March 22 and April 25.  Rome saw that she could begin conditioning people toward Sunday sacredness by using the resurrection of Christ on “the first day of the week” as a starting point. Victor I’s decree in AD 190 made Easter always fall on a Sunday.

Today Satan is working to have all the world worship on Sunday. Through ecumenism and the use of the Church’s festivals (like Easter and Christmas) Rome hopes to lead all Christianity back into her fold. Revelation 18:4 says, “Come out of her (Babylon), my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”  We must be sure we have come out of Babylon so we don’t participate in her judgments.

The Church of the East would not agree to Pope Victor’s decree and Papas found his church separated from the fellowship of the Roman Church. As we will see, this exclusion was actually a protection for the Church of the East. It helped to keep her doctrines pure and she had the freedom to spread the gospel through the region.

Easter was not the only difference between the Church of the East and the Roman Church. The Church of the East “rejected the use of images, and interposed no mediator like the Virgin Mary between God and man. The Church of the East also dispensed with candles, incense, relics, and many other usages of imperial Christianity…. [They] rejected the supremacy of the bishop of Rome.” Truth Triumphant 273. The clergy were allowed to marry although, as was mentioned earlier, many of the young men chose to not marry so they could work full time for God’s cause. The Church of the East did not teach transubstantiation, (the wafer becoming the real body of Jesus and the wine becoming the real blood of Jesus during the mass) or that there was a purgatory.

Not only did The Church of the East have to contend with Rome’s anger over their unwillingness to accept pagan customs but it was met with hostility by other religions in their area. One of them was Zoroastrianism. This was a religion which was begun by a man named Zoroaster around the time when Daniel was in Babylon (around 600 BC). Some scholars believe he knew of the Jew’s beliefs and thought he could become powerful through beginning a religion that had many similarities to the Hebrews’ religion but which would appeal to human nature.

In Zoroastrianism we find angels, and a messiah that was to come. They believed in a resurrection of the dead and a judgment. Foods were divided into clean and unclean meats, a tithe was paid to support a priesthood and they taught that one day in seven was to be sacred. The many colorful ceremonies and processions pleased the people and Zoroastrianism’s appeal grew rapidly.  Today the ruins of its fire temples can be found in modern Iran, Iraq and India.

This new religion was primarily sun worship. Mithra, the god of light, was the object of their worship. “Sunday was devoted to Mithra, or the sun, the greatest of all gods of Zoroastrianism. … Since it was pre-eminently a religion of sun worship, what was more appropriate than to choose Sunday, the day of the sun, as the holy day?” Truth Triumphant 130. The priests gathered the people together to be taught their religious laws and Sunday was chosen as their day of worship.     Mithraism, a later religion, adopted Zoroastrianism and introduced it into the Roman Empire “thus having paved the way for this form of sun worship to become a universal religion in the Roman world. …This same religion captivated province after province of the Roman Empire until, through the popularizing of its sun-god, Mithra, it threatened to stifle Christianity.” Truth Triumphant 268, 129. The worship of the sun was something the early Christians had to face in both the East and the West.

We are told a story of the catholico who succeeded Papas, Mar Shimun. The Persian Shah was his childhood friend and now he was in trouble with the king because he would not force his church people to pay taxes for a war between Persia and Rome. Mar Shimun “refused to do so, on the grounds that his people were too poor to pay and that he was not a tax-collector. His arrest and the destruction of all Christian churches was immediately ordered. He was arrested at Seleucia-Ctesiphon and taken to Karka d’Ledan where the king was.

“He was offered freedom, not only for himself, but for his ‘melet’ of people, if he would worship the sun only once. ‘The sun went into mourning when its creator died,’ said Shimun. The king begged him by the memory of their personal friendship to yield, but the [catholico] remained firm, and on the morning of the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, in the year AD 339, along with five bishops and a hundred minor clergy, he sealed his testimony with his blood. Mar Shimun, the last of the company to suffer martyrdom, died for two of the noblest causes for which it is possible for man to suffer: his faith in God and his duty to his people.”

God has told us that there will again be a test for His people over worshipping the sun. In The Great Controversy 605 we are told, “The Sabbath will be the great test of loyalty, for it is the point of truth especially controverted. When the final test shall be brought to bear upon men, then the line of distinction will be drawn between those who serve God and those who serve Him not. While the observance of the false sabbath in compliance with the law of the state, contrary to the fourth commandment, will be an avowal of allegiance to a power that is in opposition to God, the keeping of the true Sabbath, in obedience to God’s law, is an evidence of loyalty to the Creator. While one class, by accepting the sign of submission to earthly powers, receive the mark of the beast, the other choosing the token of allegiance to divine authority, receive the seal of God.”

Like Mar Shimun we will have a life or death decision to make. Are you learning now to trust God in everything so that you are ready for this terrible trial?