How Satan Hijacked Christianity

https://www.thetrumpet.com/article/13290.31.0.0/how-satan-hijacked-christianity

Simon the Sorcerer

Whenever God builds something, you can be sure that Satan will erect a counterfeit soon thereafter. The true Church officially began on the day of Pentecost A.D. 31. This took place in the midst of the powerful Roman Empire, which stretched from Britain to modern-day Turkey.

Just two years later, Simon the sorcerer came on the scene (Acts 8). “Simon Magus … unquestionably adulterated Christianity with pagan ideas and practices, and gave himself out … for an emanation of God,” wrote Philip Schaff in History of the Christian Church. “This heresy, in the second century, spread over the whole church, east and west, in the various schools of gnosticism.”

This Simon Magus acted like he was God! He must have been demon-possessed. Satan gave him great power to oppose God’s Church. Simon’s influence spawned “various schools of gnosticism”—he caused people to question God’s existence!

Satan the devil has deceived the whole world (Revelation 12:9). This includes the tens of thousands of Christian sects worldwide—except for one. For 1,900 years after Christ’s death, Satan suppressed the delivery of the true gospel message around the world! And it all started with Simon the sorcerer.

Two Gospels

Here is what Mr. Armstrong wrote in The Incredible Human Potential about Simon’s demoniacal persecution of the true Church: “Thereupon this Simon appropriated theNAME of Christ, calling his Babylonian mystery religion ‘Christianity.’ Satan moved this man and used him as his instrument to persecute and all but destroy the true Church of God. Before the end of the first century, probably by A.D. 70, he managed to suppress the message Christ had brought from God. There ensued ‘the lost century’ in the history of the true Church of God. There was a well-organized conspiracy to blot out all record of Church history during that period. A hundred years later, history reveals a ‘Christianity’ utterly unlike the Church Christ founded.”

Simon pushed God’s Church to the brink of total destruction. Then he attached the name of Christ to his Babylonian mystery religion. This certainly doesn’t mean he started preaching the gospel Christ taught.

A fierce controversy arose over which gospel to preach. People had to choose between the message Christ taught about the coming Kingdom of God or a counterfeit, shallow, syrupy message about Christ the man. Obviously, the latter won out.