if you pray to man-made stone statues like the Golden calf at the Golden Cafe Moses was enraged at, or "mother Mary" in stone in front of a church, it is time for you to grow up. Stone statues do not answer prayers.
During the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (306–337 AD), Christianity began to transition to the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. Historians remain uncertain about Constantine's reasons for favoring Christianity, and theologians and historians have often argued about which form of early Christianity he subscribed to. There is no consensus among scholars as to whether he adopted his mother Helena's Christianity in his youth, or, as claimed by Eusebius of Caesarea, encouraged her to convert to the faith he had adopted.
The accession of Constantine was a turning point for early Christianity. After his victory, Constantine took over the role of patron of the Christian faith. He supported the Church financially, had a number of basilicas built, granted privileges (e.g., exemption from certain taxes) to clergy, promoted Christians to high-ranking offices, returned property confiscated during the Great Persecution of Diocletian,[27] and endowed the church with land and other wealth.[28] Between 324 and 330, Constantine built a new city, New Rome, at Byzantium on the Bosporos, which would be named Constantinople for him. Unlike "old" Rome, the city began to employ overtly Christian architecture, contained churches within the city walls, and had no pre-existing temples from other religions.[29]
In doing this, however, Constantine required those who had not converted to Christianity to pay for the new city.[28] Christian chroniclers tell that it appeared necessary to Constantine "to teach his subjects to give up their rites ... and to accustom them to despise their temples and the images contained therein,"[30] This led to the closure of temples because of a lack of support, their wealth flowing to the imperial treasure;[31] Constantine did not need to use force to implement this.[28] It was the chronicler Theophanes who added centuries later that temples "were annihilated", but this was considered "not true" by contemporary historians.[32]
Early Christian Bibles
According to Eusebius, in 331 Constantine had commissioned him to deliver fifty volumes of scriptures for the churches of Constantinople, which were to be bound in leather and easily portable.[38] Only three or four churches are known certainly to have existed in Constantine's reign, but others appear to have been planned or established, for which the scriptures were commissioned.[38] The volumes were likely gospel books containing the Canonical Gospels of the Four Evangelists rather than complete Bibles with the entire Biblical canon, which were very rare in antiquity.[38]
Athanasius (Apol. Const. 4) recorded around 340 Alexandrian scribes preparing Bibles for Constans. Little else is known. It has been speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists, and that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are examples of these Bibles. Together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus, these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles.[39]
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Does anyone believe a man was whipped, scourged, beaten, a crown of thorns on his head, and he was going to carry a tree as big as half a house up a hill? Much of the Bible circa 329 was written to brainwash people and hold them hostage. Hey, let's merge Paganism with Christianity and throw out Jesus's real birthday for a Pagan Holiday. If you can't see that in front of your face then there is no hope for you. For almost two centuries the charade worked. Mother Mary's "ascension" into heaven? Didn't some Egyptian figure have the same miracle?
Or was Mary based on Isis, what came before? http://jessicajewettonline.com/did-isis-become-the-virgin-mary It's easy to make up stories about what happened two thousand years ago, but to blindly believe a church without any proof is ridiculous.
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