Tares Among the Wheat: Sequel to a Lamp in the Dark (2012) - full transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: For
nearly 2,000 years,

the world has been turned
upside down over what can only

be called the most
controversial book of all time.

To its critics, the Bible
is merely a combination

of myth and legend
mingled with history.

But for those who believe
in its sacred writings,

it is the inspired and
inherent word of God.

A divine record that not only
tells the way by which men get

to Heaven, but also warns of an
eternal judgment for those who

reject the light of
truth found within.



Jesus said, "And this is the
condemnation, that light is

come into the world, and men
loved darkness rather than

light, because their
deeds were evil."

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: After he was crucified
and raised from the dead,

the followers of Jesus Christ
went into all the world.

To the Jews first and
then to the Gentiles,

they preach that Jesus
is the true messiah

and that he suffered
for the sins of men

according to the writings
of the holy scripture.

-"To him give all
the prophets witness,

that through his name
whosoever believeth in him

shall receive
remission of sins."

NARRATOR: But Jesus himself
had said to his disciples,



"I send you forth as sheep,
in the midst of wolves."

The apostles also
warned believers

about seducing spirits
and doctrines of devils,

and of certain men
who would creep

into the church with
deception and lies.

-"But there were false
prophets also among the people,

even as there shall be
false teachers among you,

who privily shall bring
in damnable heresies,

even denying the Lord
that bought them,

and bring upon themselves
swift destruction."

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Through the Middle
Ages many of the reformers

came to believe that
these warnings pertained

to the rise of the Roman church.

In the Book of Revelation
they saw the picture

of Rome's Apostasy presented
as an unfaithful woman

sitting atop a
seven headed beast.

"And upon her forehead
was a name written,

Mystery, Babylon the
Great, the Mother

of Harlots and
Abominations of the Earth.

And I saw the woman drunken
with the blood of the saints,

and with the blood of
the martyrs of Jesus."

But the Roman church did
not rise up overnight.

It came about one step at a time
through the early centuries.

DR. RONALD COOKE: If you look
at your early church history,

you had five patriarchates
that came into being.

Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria,
Constantinople, and Rome.

So you had five
main church centers

over the first couple
of hundred years.

But Alexandria
fell, and Jerusalem

and Antioch also fell, early on.

So you're left with
Constantinople and Rome.

So you had those
two but Rome gained

the ascendancy in the West.

DR. HENRY HUDSON:
There developed,

by the fourth, fifth, sixth
century, controversies

among all the bishops in various
parts of the world, especially

Europe and in the Middle East.

And whenever there
was a controversy,

some court had to decide
what the answer is.

DR. RONALD COOKE: And
many problems that arose,

early on theological
problems, would then

be sent to Rome to be
looked at and answers given.

NARRATOR: While the
New Testament church

had begun in ancient
Jerusalem and spread

throughout the Gentile world,
somehow the leadership of Rome

dominated as the chief
oracle in matters of debate.

DR. HENRY HUDSON:
Well, you've got

to remember the history of Rome.

The Roman Empire was a great
empire for hundreds of years.

And the popes became the
heirs to that kind of power.

NARRATOR: In the fifth century,
one of the most well known

doctors of the early
church, Augustine of Hippo,

would make reference
to a conflict that

arose between certain
African bishops.

Augustine wrote,
"In this matter,

two councils have already sent
letters to the Apostolic See

and from thence
rescripts have come back.

The cause is finished."

DR. HENRY HUDSON: What Augustine
was saying in that very

famous statement,
he was saying this.

If Rome makes a decision,
that settles it.

So they needed a court and
the prestige of the empire

was in the city of Rome
by Augustine's time.

And so that's all
he's saying, he

said, when we have an
issue, when we have

a difference of opinion,
let's turn to Rome.

NARRATOR: In the centuries that
followed, Augustine's statement

would be paraphrased
by the popes

and doctors of the Roman church.

His words were taken to
mean, "Rome has spoken,

the matter is closed."

In other words, if the Church
of Rome sets forth an opinion,

all other churches must obey.

Then, in the fifth
century, the ancient empire

suffered its decline and fell as
it was sacked by the barbarian

tribes that would reduce the
City of Seven Hills to ruin.

DR. RONALD COOKE:
Rome was overrun

by the Huns and Attila the Hun.

And so the whole system of
the empire was defeated.

And so the popes
then began to take

the place of the
ancient ceasars.

And so they came to take over
not only spiritual leadership

but also political leadership.

And so Rome from then on
grasped at more and more power.

And that's how the papacy
really came into being.

NARRATOR: While the papacy
did not spring up overnight,

and there were many events
that led to its development,

the date most often looked
to by Protestant historians

is 606 AD, when the Roman
emperor, Phocas, named Pope

Boniface the Third
the universal bishop

over all the Christian churches.

This is when the
papal power was said

to be officially
established in Rome.

ROGER OAKLAND: For a man to
say that he is the true leader

of all Christianity
is not only unbiblical

but it goes completely
against God's word

and it opens the door
for a control system

to be set up that can control
the world that Satan can use.

And so I would say
that this concept

of a pope from the beginning
was Satan's plan for man

to manipulate the church,
in the name of Christ,

but set up a system
of anti-Christ

or anti-Christian belief system.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: Once the
papal system came into being,

and it was clear that it
represented an apostate system

that combined pagan
teachings and traditions

with worldly politics, all
under the mask of Christianity,

you had Christians then that
fell into two categories.

There were those who followed
after the teachings of the pope

and the Church of Rome.

And then you had those who
were known throughout history

as Bible believers, who kept
themselves separate from Rome

and were determined to base
their faith on the scriptures

alone, without any kind
of man-made doctrines

or sacred councils, which
they had in the Roman system.

NARRATOR: It was because they
rejected the pope's claims

of authority that many
Bible believers were

persecuted in the
early centuries.

English author Adrian Hilton
writes that "The Roman

pseudo-Christianity caused
many faithful believers

to flee into the mountains
of Europe and Asia Minor

to escape persecution and death.

And there they continued,
away from the world's view,

as the true Church of Christ.

DR. RONALD COOKE: These groups,
in many cases, opposed Rome.

They usually looked upon
Rome as the Antichrist.

They looked upon the
Mass as blasphemy.

They didn't believe in
the priesthood of Rome.

And many other of
the teachings of Rome

they repudiated and
claimed that they

went back to the early church.

Particularly the Waldensians,
or the Vallenses.

They claimed they
were the true Church

and they didn't
separate from Rome

but Rome separated from them.

DR. HENRY HUDSON: They were
Christians around who did not

always see eye to
eye with the pope

or the Roman Catholic Church.

In fact there were
a number of them.

INTERVIEWER (OFFSCREEN): Do you
believe these earlier groups,

the Waldenses and the
Albigenses were Christians?

DR. HENRY HUDSON: Yeah,
many of them were.

I've read their writings
and studied their history

and they were willing
to die for their faith.

DR. RONALD COOKE:
The Paulicians also

go back into Armenia and other
places, way back as early

as the fourth century.

They believe also they were
continuing the true Church

and opposed, they
opposed, everything

about the papal
church and looked

upon it as the Anti-Christ.

NARRATOR: The belief that these
earlier groups were in fact

Christians was
held by nearly all

of the reformers including men
like John Wickliffe, Martin

Luther, John Calvin,
and many others.

In fact, many Christians
are familiar with the idea

of America as a city on a hill.

Well that speech was originally
given by Governor John

Winthrop, who was
one of the founders

of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

And as he and the other
Puritans came to the New World,

he gave this speech
about America, or they

themselves, as a city on a hill.

But at the beginning
of that speech,

he makes reference
to the Waldenses

as an example of
Christian charity.

In his speech, Winthrop said,
"We are a company professing

ourselves fellow
members of Christ.

We ought to account ourselves
knit together by this bond

of love, and live in
the exercise of it.

This was notorious in the
practice of the Christians

in former times as is
testified of the Waldenses.

They used to love or any
of their own religion,

even before they were
acquainted with them."

Nevertheless, modern
histories continue

to report that these early
Bible believers were heretics

who believed in
occult doctrines.

INTERVIEWER (OFFSCREEN): What
do you say to people who present

those modern,
historic arguments?

DR. RONALD COOKE: Well, I
would say, first of all,

that a lot of our
history comes from Rome.

We have to recognize that.

It was old Gibbon who said
that when the wars are fought,

the victors tell the story.

I'm not getting
his words exactly,

but that's the gist
of what he says.

He says, in other words, it is
the victors who tell the story.

So if you're a defeated
Christian small group,

then you are--
your story is told

from the standpoint of
those who conquered you.

And Pelican, the
modern American scholar

says, and there is no other way,
many times, to tell the story.

NARRATOR: The common charge
against the Waldenses

and Albigenses is that these
groups held to unorthodox ideas

about God and that they
were guilty of what

was called the Manichean heresy.

DR. RONALD COOKE: The Manicheans
believed, they were dualists,

they believed in a God of
good and a God of evil.

And that was one of the
great heresies of the church.

NARRATOR: In time,
the word Manichean

came to be a general
term for heresy

but did not necessarily mean
that a person actually believed

the doctrines of the Manicheans.

When Martin Luther begin the
Reformation, the Synod of Sens

accused him of
being a Manichean.

In fact, modern
historian SJ Barnett

writes that, "During and
after the Reformation,

Catholic propagandists
hoped to undermine

the legitimacy of Protestantism.

Catholic apologists usually
designated Luther and Calvin

as Manichean heretics from the
third century dualist heresy."

DR. RONALD COOKE: When they
couldn't find anything wrong

with a so-called
heretic, they would

charge them with Manicheanism.

Because that was always
punishable by death.

So if I couldn't find
out that you were

a heretic in some other way,
then I would just charge you

as being a Manichean and that
way I could put you to death

and I didn't have to prove
a whole lot of other things

against you.

So that was one of
the tactics of Rome--

was to charge whatever
groups were being charged

with whatever heresies they
were being investigated

for-- to charge them with
Manicheanism so that their case

could be made easier and they
could be shown to be true

heretics.

So you cannot take a lot of
the information that we get.

You have to certainly
investigate it thoroughly

to find out what
these groups believed.

ROGER OAKLAND: They
refused to acknowledge

the dogmas, or the ideas or
the doctrines that were being

promoted by men, that
weren't biblical.

And so they took a
biblical position

and because of their biblical
position, they were persecuted.

NARRATOR: As we said earlier,
most of the reformers

believed that the charges of
heresy against these earlier

groups were falsely
created by Rome

to justify her persecutions.

Yet most Protestant historians
believe that the Waldenses

and the Albigenses were
forerunners of the Reformation.

19th century historian
William Jones

wrote, "That to justify the
Wldenses and Albigenses is

indeed to defend the
Reformation and Reformers.

They having so long before
us, with an exemplary courage,

labored to preserve
the Christian religion

in its ancient purity
which the Church of Rome

all this while has
endeavored to abolish."

To be more specific, it
would be more accurate to say

that the popes have
endeavored to abolish biblical

Christianity in favor
of a religious system

of their own making.

And because of
this, they have seen

the Bible as their chief enemy.

And this is the reason
why they outlawed it

from being read by
the common people.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN:
Throughout history, they

gave different pronouncements
saying that you can't

give these holy
things to the swine.

And they used that scripture--
it's completely bogus-- pearls

before swine doesn't
have anything

to do with giving the
life-giving scripture

to the people, but the
Roman Catholic Church just

looked at the common man
as pigs who could not

possibly understand
the scriptures.

NARRATOR: Because of this,
Martin Luther, and eventually

the rest of the reformers, came
to believe that the pope was

the fulfillment of biblical
warnings concerning

the greatest enemy of Christ.

DR. HENRY HUDSON: If you make
a study of the life of Luther,

you'll find that there was a
very slow transition from 1517,

when he nailed the 95 Theses
to the door, to about the year

1520.

So that's only a
matter of three years.

But from someone who thought
he was being faithful

to the church-- even
though it was the Roman

church-- to the time
he gets to 1520,

and there's a bull which
actually excommunicates him,

he turns and he actually
says that I am convinced now

that the pope sitting on
the throne there in Rome

is the Antichrist.

Because he was so contrary--
his power and teaching

so contrary-- to the basic
truths of the gospel.

NARRATOR: Luther and many others
preached the gospel of grace

and brought forth the
Protestant Reformation.

But their chief obstacle
was the conflict

between the biblical teaching
of salvation by faith in Christ

as a free gift from God versus
Rome's teaching of a work

salvation based on the rituals
of the Catholic church.

DR. HENRY HUDSON: The
Roman church was teaching,

had been teaching, for five
hundred years or longer,

that a man is
saved by his works.

And then, some of the
contemporary scholars

say you're wrong.

Because the medieval
theologians did

believe that the
power, or the-- they

called it the potentia
absoluta-- the potent power,

the absolute power
of God can save

a soul by grace through faith.

Yeah, they did say that.

But then they said,
yeah but there's

the potentia ordinata of God.

And you'll say,
well, what is that?

Well, while God could do
that because he's absolutely

sovereign, that's not
the method he ordained.

The method he ordained was
the church and the ordinances,

or the sacraments.

And through the sacraments,
if a man-- the terms are very

clear-- you have
to factura en quad

se est. That's Latin
for a man has to do,

within himself, what he has
to do to prepare himself

for what's called the
merit of congruity.

And when he does
that, then God comes

in with a merit of condignity.

So it's a very, very
complicated process.

And that's still believed today.

And yet it goes back
to the middle ages.

Because you're building up a
storehouse of merit, and that's

the whole system.

INTERVIEWER (OFFSCREEN): Is that
basically works righteousness?

DR. HENRY HUDSON: Yeah,
that's exactly what it is.

NARRATOR: While
such debates might

seem tedious in
the modern world,

to the people of the Middle Ages
the understanding of salvation

was quite literally a
matter of life and death.

Centuries later, and the
doctrine of work salvation

through sacraments and rituals
continues in the Church of Rome

today, where more than
one billion Catholics

follow the teachings
of the pope.

DR. RONALD COOKE: To deceive
one billion people about

their eternal destiny, I think
you cannot get a greater lie

than that, nor a greater
misrepresentation

of the scripture.

When it says Christ has purged
our sins when he sat down

at the right hand of
the majesty on high--

and in the Latin vulgate,
that is purgatorium--

it's the very same root from
which they get purgatory.

But the Bible teaches
nothing about purgatory.

The Bible teaches that
Christ has purged our sins

and taken our sins in
his own body on the tree

that we might go free
and be pardoned and not

have to go to some
purgatorial fires

to get our sins purged away.

So it's a blasphemy against
the cross-work of Christ

and the resurrection of
Christ that assures us

that our sins have been
forgiven and that we stand

justified before God
through the cross-work,

death and resurrection
of Christ.

NARRATOR: To oppose
the papal teaching,

the reformers declared that
salvation was by God's grace

alone, through faith
alone, in Christ alone.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN: Where
John Fox and the reformers,

they rediscovered-- beginning
with Martin Luther--

the just shall live by faith.

NARRATOR: And to
prove their doctrine,

they were determined to make
the Bible available to all men.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN:
Martin Luther

took Erasmus' 1519, a
Greek New Testament,

and he translated his
September Bible, 1522.

And they were sold
as quick as they

could come off the
printing press.

And people began
reading it and realized

that Rome was telling them lies.

And they begin
trusting Jesus Christ.

Hence, you had the start of the
Reformation in Germany there.

NARRATOR: From Germany, Luther's
teaching spread to England

and would influence William
Tyndale, the man whose mission

would be to ensure that
even a common plow boy could

read the word of God.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN:

started reading the word of God.

He had a desire for the
people to have the word of God

and so the Reformation
just breaks out.

And Roman Catholicism,
the Catholics, they

can't put a lid on it.

Because once the people get the
Bible in their own language,

the Bible says you
shall know the truth

and the truth will
make you free.

And people started getting
this huge burden of sin

off of their shoulders.

I think of Thomas Bilney.

Thomas Bilney thought he was
the Judas of his generation.

And so he thought he
would do something

that was worthy of betrayal.

And so he went out
and secretly bought

an Erasmus New Testament.

And he opened it
to 1 Timothy, where

Paul says he's the
chiefest of sinners

and that Christ came into
the world to die for them.

He says if God can forgive
Paul, he can forgive me.

He was gloriously saved.

And let me just tell you,
he went to confession.

And he goes and
confesses to Latimer.

Tells Latimer, father
Latimer, he tells him,

father, I've sinned.

I went and bought this
Greek New Testament

and I read about how
Jesus Christ forgives sins

and I've trusted Jesus
Christ as my personal Savior.

And Latimer says,
in his own words,

reading "Fox's Book of Martyrs,"
I learned more that day,

from that confession of Thomas
Bilney that I had learned

in 20 years of
studying the scripture.

It happened to be that
Hugh Latimer comes

to know Jesus Christ
as his personal Savior.

So as the word of God gets
out, Chris, it's like a fire.

It goes and people read
it, and they're set free.

And I'll tell you, Bilney says
it was sweeter than eating

fresh honey out of
the honeycomb as he's

talking about the scriptures.

Even it's said of
William Tyndale,

he was a man who was singularly
addicted to the scriptures.

NARRATOR: Like William Tyndale,
Thomas Bilney and Hugh Latimer

would both be condemned
by the Church of Rome

and were burned at the stake for
their faith in the word of God.

Nevertheless, their
sacrifice was not in vain,

as their deaths and
those of many others,

inspired countless souls
across Europe to turn from Rome

and embrace the true gospel.

VOICE OFFSCREEN: And they were
burning the saints of God.

Thank God the the gospel
burned with mighty fire.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN:

cast kept them
opressed and surpressed

and it kept them under
a bondage of guilt.

And Jesus Christ through the
scriptures sets them free.

The Holy Spirit used the holy
word of God to set them free.

NARRATOR: But this
freedom would not

be proclaimed
without consequence.

The Church of Rome responded
with its own counter attack.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: To understand
what the Vatican did next,

we have to realize
the tremendous impact

that the Reformation had.

Protestant historian JA Wylie
wrote that the Reformation had

transformed whole
countries all over Europe

and it would ultimately
change the world.

NARRATOR: Wylie wrote that,
"Advancing over all opposition,

this great religious revival,
not yet half a century old

had acquired a strength and
a breadth truly amazing.

From the little Saxon
town of Wittenburg,

it had spread itself
out, comprehending

the powerful kingdoms of
Saxony, Pomerania, Poland,

Bohemia, Hungary,
and Transylvania.

The Reformation had been
welcomed by Norway, Sweden,

Denmark, Holland,
and the Netherlands.

Its career had been one of
unimpeded, continuous victory.

The South and West of
France were Protestant,

and the supremacy
of the Reformation

seemed all but certain.

Of the countries
of Western Europe,

only two, Italy and Spain,
now remained with the pope."

DR. RONALD COOKE:
They didn't take

Martin Luther
seriously at first.

Nor did they take his
movement very seriously.

But as it began to
spread, they realized

they had a real fight on
their hands, so to speak.

NARRATOR: In 1540,
the pope commissioned

a former Spanish soldier,
named Ignatius Loyola,

to form a military
company of priests

within the Catholic church.

Their chief purpose was to
launch a Counter Reformation,

to destroy the work
of the reformers,

and bring the
Protestant churches back

under the authority of the pope.

They were named the Society of
Jesus, or as their enemies call

them, the Jesuits.

DR. RONALD COOKE: Malachi

Catholic writer, would
practically call them

the storm troopers
of the papacy.

Their idea was to defeat the
Protestant churches there

that were going on
throughout Europe

at the time of the Reformation.

And then to continue that
work in education, the forming

of universities,
colleges, seminaries,

all across America
and across Europe.

So the Jesuits really have been
engaged in just about every

kind of activity known to man,
educational, and subversive,

intrigue.

And many people have said they
were linked to assassinations.

So the Counter Reformation
involved wars, sieges,

everything under the sun, to
try to defeat Protestantism.

NARRATOR: But the key point
of contention was the Bible.

It was how the reformers
understood the scripture

and preached to the
population at large that

was the greatest threat to Rome.

-They're dangerous.

They're dangerous
to everything we

believe as the Catholic church.

And we've got to do
something to stop it.

NARRATOR: With the
printing press,

the Bible was being
translated and duplicated

at unprecedented rates
throughout Europe.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN:
There was a rash

of Bible translation
and Bible publication.

And it all came to
a screeching halt

after the King James
version of the Bible.

Virtually all translation stops.

There was such a
flurry from 1526

until 1611.

It was so meticulously
done by people

who believed that God
had inspired his word.

NARRATOR: The King
James translation

would in time be considered
the crowning achievement

of the Protestant Reformation
and would come to symbolize all

that the martyrs had
suffered for the word of God.

But because of its association
with the reform, something

the Vatican saw as
an act of rebellion

against her authority,
the King James version

would come to be hated by Rome.

DR. ALAN O'REILLY: That is
the fruit of the Reformation

that the Jesuits want
to destroy above all.

Because until they do that,
they cannot be sure of getting

the entire world, and
especially England,

back under the
thrall of the popary.

NARRATOR: In 1825, the Jesuits,
meeting in Chieri, Italy,

declared their intention to
seize control of the Bible

as part of their
centuries-old plan

to bring all the world
under the power of Rome.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: If you
study the Jesuits in history,

you discover that they operate
more like an intelligence

community, like the CIA or MI6,
rather than a religious order.

And they are primarily
the supporters

of what is called papist
or Romanist doctorine.

And this is the belief that Rome
should govern the whole world.

It does not necessarily
apply to all Catholics,

because many Catholics
don't agree with it.

But papist doctrine is
essentially the belief

that because the pope
is the Vicar of Christ,

and he stands in the
place of Christ himself,

and because Christ
is the King of Kings,

therefore, the pope should have
the authority to reign over

all the kings and
princes on planet Earth.

And it is this doctrine
that led to nearly

all the wars of old Europe.

NARRATOR: Even in the
late 19th century,

Rome's plan for
world dominion was

known and documented
among English churchmen.

In 1888, a meeting of the
Protestant missions in London

=ed that "the missionary
program of the Vatican,

doubt it who may, embraces
the conversion of Britain

and the United States of
America, and through them,

the subjugation of
the whole world."

NARRATOR: To
accomplish their aims,

the Jesuits deemed it necessary
to take control of the Bible.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: Because the
Bible exposes all of the lies

and the false doctrines
of the papacy,

it has always been
hated by Rome.

And they've admitted repeatedly
that the teaching of scripture

contradicts the teaching--
the official teaching--

of the Roman Catholic Church.

And so once you realize
that's the real conflict.

It's between the
authority of the pope

versus the authority
of the Bible.

And at that point
the Jesuit doctrines

begin to make a lot more sense.

NARRATOR: In modern times,
the Jesuit view of the Bible

was exposed by
Doctor Ian Paisley,

the former first minister of
Northern Ireland, who has spent

decades fighting against Rome's
influence in his own country.

-We're not responsible
for the violence.

The violence comes from
the Roman Catholic Church.

NARRATOR: Calling himself
a historic Protestant,

Paisley has continually
protested the authority

of the pope, both politically
and theologically.

-Ulster will not fall to him.

-I want you to see this wafer
after it is consecrated.

The church of Rome teaches, that
it is the actual body, bones,

blood, sinews and
deity of Jesus Christ.

[CROWD APPLAUSE]

-The Lord Jesus Christ
offered on the cross one

full, complete, and never to
be repeated sacrifice for sins.

And God does not
come down from Heaven

at the whim of a
bachelor priest.

[CROWD APPLAUSE]

NARRATOR: In more recent
years, Paisley spoke openly

on European radio exposing
a document that reveals

the Jesuit's view
of the Bible versus

the authority of the pope.

DR. IAN PAISLEY: Bishop
Wordsworth, an eminent Church

of England divine, uncovers
the secrecy of the Jesuits

in the exposure of a
document, used by them

in their early days
to compel Protestants

to submit to Mother Church.

Roman Catholic
Confession publicly

prescribed and
proposed to protestants

on their admission to the
Roman Catholic Church.

We confess that we've
been brought from heresy,

to the true saving
Roman Catholic faith.

By the singular care of
our supreme governors,

and by the diligance
and aid of our masters,

the fathers of all
the Order of Jesuits.

And we desire to certify this by
our vows to the world at large.

We confess that whatever
new thing the Pope ordains,

whether it be in scripture
or not in scripture,

and whatever he commands
is divine and therefore

ought to be held by lay
people in greater esteem

than the precepts
of the living God.

We confess that the
reading of holy scripture

is the origin of
heresy, and schism

and the source of blasphemy.

We confess that holy
scripture is imperfect,

and a dead letter until it
is explained by the Supreme

Pontiff, and allowed by him
to be read by the laity.

We confess and assert that the
pope is our most holy father,

is to be obeyed on all
things, without any exception,

and that such heretics
as contravene his orders,

are not only to
be burnt but to be

delivered body
and soul to Hell."

CHRISTIAN PINTO:
Since the Middle Ages,

that Jesuit's core agenda
has had to do with compelling

their followers to renounce
the authority of the Bible

in favor of the
authority of the pope.

Then in the 19th century,
their movement gained momentum

and through their
textual critics

they insisted that the
Bible was a flawed book.

And they set about
trying to prove

all the flaws they
could to the world.

And at the same
time, they officially

declared through
Vatican Council one

that the pope was infallible.

So their message was clear.

Don't trust the
Bible, trust the pope.

The Bible's a flawed book,
the pope is infallible.

And so this brought everything
full circle to the conflict

that had been raging
for hundreds of years

throughout the Middle Ages.

And that's ultimately what
their meeting in Chieri, Italy

was all about.

NARRATOR: The information
discussed by Jesuit leaders

in Chieri was published
in 1848 by a former Jesuit

initiate named Jacopo Leone.

His book was titled
The Jesuit Conspiracy,

The Secret Plan of the Order.

In it, he claimed to have
overheard the plans of Jesuit

leaders and was compelled to
write down the information

and publish it as a warning
to the rest of the world.

Leone wrote specifically
of how the Jesuits

intended to take
control of the Bible.

Allegedly, they said "Then
the Bible, that serpent which,

with head erect and
eyes flashing fire,

threatens us with its venom,
shall be changed again

into a rod, as soon as
we are able to seize it.

Oh then, mysterious rod!

We will not again suffer thee
to escape from our hands.

For you know too well, that
for three centuries past,

this cruel asp has
left us no repose.

You well know with what
folds it entwines us,

and with what
fangs it gnaws us."

According to Leone,
one of the Jesuits

openly admitted that
the scriptures do not

support the Roman
Catholic faith.

Speaking of the Bible he said,
"If I may tell you openly

what I think of this book,
it is not at all for us.

It is against us.

I do not wonder at the
invincible obstinancy

it engenders in all those who
regard its verses as inspired.

In the simplicity
of youth, I fully

expected on opening the
New Testament to find there

the authority of a superior
chief in the Church.

The worship of the Virgin,
the mass, purgatory, relics.

But in every page, I found
my expectations disappointed.

At last, after having read,
at least six times over,

that little book, I was forced
to acknowledge to myself

that it actually
sets forth a system

of religion,
altogether different."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: What this
Jesuit priest acknowledged all

the way back in the 19th
century is the same thing

that the reformers acknowledge.

They noticed that the
teachings of the Bible

and the teachings of the pope
were dramatically different.

The difference is that
the reformers chose

to follow the Bible,
while the Jesuits chose

to fight against it on
behalf of the traditions

and power of the
Catholic church.

NARRATOR: The view of that
Jesuits toward the Bible

could be likened to that of
the ancient Pharisees 2000

years ago, who opposed Christ.

As Jesus said of
them, "Full well,

ye reject the commandment
of God that ye

may keep your own tradition."

And again, he
said, "In vain they

do worship me,
teaching for doctrines

the commandments of men.

At their meeting
and Chieri in 1825,

the Jesuits
discussed the methods

to be used in their ongoing
Counter Reformation,

and their plan for the
subversion of the Bible.

They said specifically
that "A few breaches made

in Protestantism-- whether
these conversions proceed

from genuine motives, or
whether they be determined

by advantageous offers,
which shall not be spared

if the person be
worth the trouble--

we ought, by every
possible means,

to secure the aid
of modern thinkers.

If they can be induced to
write at all in our favor,

let us pay them well either
in money or in laudation."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: The Jesuits,
since the Middle Ages,

have been known
for seducing people

outside the Catholic
church-- even members

of Protestant churches--
And making deals

with them to help
the cause of Rome.

And this was especially
revealed in the 19th century,

during what was called the
Oxford Movement in England.

And it was in the
wake of this movement

that the Vatican
really pushed to try

and take control of the Bible.

And that's why it's so
important to understand what

the Oxford Movement
was all about.

DR. ALAN O'REILLY: In 1833,
the Oxford Movement started.

It's perhaps not
without significance

that we're not only looking
at what Rome is doing,

we have to consider that
the lord himself will bring

judgment on a nation
that foresakes

him and foresakes
the word of God.

The Oxford Movement
was an attempt,

effectively, to Romanise
the Church of England

and to get the Church of England
away from the scriptures--

from the King James
Bible-- and back

to the ritualistic
practices of Rome.

Now, it was done in
a very subtle manner

and it really typified
the Jesuit approach

of Bishop Olatom which is,
above all, not too much zeal.

And it tried to portray the
true position of the Church

of England as a sort of a
middle of the road organization.

But at the same time, it
did promote what it called

a high view of the sacraments.

So that, although it professed
to be against what it regarded

as extreme Protestants--
sad to say,

Bible believing evangelicals--

and also what it regarded
as extreme Romanism--

say, the persecutions

by Catholocism.

The Inquisition, perhaps--

nevertheless it
sought gradually,

by publications of what were
called Tracts for Our Times,

to give a favorable view to
things like the Roman mass.

NARRATOR: In 1898, a man
named Walter Walsh published

a book titled The Secret
History of the Oxford Movement.

In it, he writes about the
activities of the Jesuits

in England.

He recorded the testimony of
a former Catholic priest who

told him, "In England, there
are a greater number of Jesuits

than in Italy.

There are Jesuits in
all classes of society.

In Parliament, among
the English clergy,

among the Protestant laity,
even in the higher stations."

He went on to say, "I could not
comprehend how a Jesuit could

be a Protestant, or how or
Protestant could be a Jesuit.

But my confessor
silenced my scruples

by telling me that Saint
Paul became as a Jew

that he might save the Jews.

It was no wonder therefore, if
a Jesuit should feign himself

a Protestant for the
conversion of Protestants."

Within less than 20 years
after the Oxford Movement,

another movement began in the
world of biblical scholarship

that would almost
completely transform

the understanding of the Bible.

This transformation
would be affected

by men who were of the
Protestant profession,

but strangely worked in
cooperation with Rome.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Prior to
the 19th century,

Protestant scholars
depended on a collection

of Greek manuscripts
that had come into Europe

after the fall of
Constantinople in 1453.

Collectively, these manuscripts
would form the foundation

of the New Testament Greek
used by the reformers.

By men like William
Tyndale, Martin Luther,

the Geneva Bible translators,
and the translation team

for the King James
version of 1611.

These Greek manuscripts
were collated

first by Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Erasmus would lay the foundation
for the traditional text

and further the belief
that the scripture

should be read by all people.

ALEXANDRE VANAUTGAERDEN:
To translate to French,

to English, to
German at this time.

Because it was very
important for Erasmus

that everybody can read the
Bible in his own speaking.

He produced five editions
of his translation

in 1516, 1519, 1522,
1529, and 1535.

All the editions were
published in Basil.

-The Erasmus 1522, it
was really revolutionary

because here we have in
this column-- and just

the beautiful artwork--
but in this column,

you have the Greek.

And what Erasmus did that really
blew people out of the water,

most people could not read Greek
back then, but many of them

could read Latin.

Scholars could read Latin.

He took the Greek and he
translated it into Latin.

And so many people had their
eyes open because they started

reading Erasmus' new translation
of the Latin from the Greek

and they found out that it was
completely different than what

they had in the Latin vulgate
of the Roman Catholic Church.

Then you'll see here,
MDXXII, that is 1522.

VOICE OFFSCREEN:
So this is Erasmus'

second or third edition?

-This is Erasmus' third edition.

It is the Foundation
for Textus Receptus'.

Then we come to Luke.

Again, the Latin and the Greek
that Erasmus had translated.

We can go all the way
back to the apocalypse,

so this is actually the Acts
of the Apostles right here.

But it, of course, goes all the
way through-- page after page

after page-- there we go,
the apocalypse, Revelation.

NARRATOR: The work
begun by Erasmus

would be later continued
by Robert Stephanus, whose

1550 Greek addition would be
used for the Geneva Bible.

In time, his work
would be furthered

by the famed calvinus
scholar, Theodore Beza.

Beza's 1598 Greek New
Testament was chiefly

used for the King
James version of 1611.

But it would be some years
later that the Elsevier brothers

in Holland would publish
the work even further

and give the reformer's
Greek its official name.

In the introduction
of their 1633 addition

they wrote, "What you have
here is the text which is now

received by all
in which, we give

nothing changed or corrupted."

Hence, the Greek of the
Protestant Reformation

would become known as Textus
Receptus, the received texts.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: So that
becomes the standard Greek

for Protestant scholars,
and remained so

for nearly 300 years.

NARRATOR: But in
the 19th century,

a German scholar named
Constantin von Tischendorf

would publish what would
become known as the most

ancient Biblical
manuscript ever recovered.

His discovery would turn the
world of Bible scholarship

upside down, convincing
many that his manuscript

was a lost version of the Bible.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN:
You have to go back

before that, with
German higher criticism.

And they developed a theory,
called the Recension Theory,

and in this Recension
Theory, they

say that the Bible was lost.

NARRATOR: The Recension Theory
was introduced by a man named

Johann Semler in
the 18th century.

One of his disciples,
Jakob Griesbach,

would popularize his theory
among German intellectuals.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: Both
Semler and Griesbach

held to unorthodox views of
Christianity, to say the least.

Semler is known as the
father of German rationalism,

and he clearly
influenced Griesbach.

Rationalism in Germany is very
much like the Enlightenment

in France, where they rejected
the idea of the divinity

of Christ because they rejected
the supernatural elements

of the Bible.

The virgin birth, Christ
being raised from the dead,

him ascending, and so on.

All of that to
them in France, it

was unreasonable because
of the reason movement.

Well, in Germany
it was irrational,

hence the term rationalism.

So they believed it was
irrational to believe

those things, so
they rejected them.

And this was the view of
both Semler and Griesbach.

So Semler and
Griesbach were two men

who essentially
rejected the gospel.

And the rationalism
that they were known for

took hold in Germany and Germany
then became the epicenter

for higher criticism
against the Bible.

NARRATOR: The concentration
of activity in Germany

is believed to have been the
working of the Jesuits, whose

aim was to destroy the
confidence of Protestants

in the inerrancy of scripture.

This was acknowledged by
Doctor Ian Paisley, who

had this to say about the
ongoing war waged by Rome

and the Jesuits
against the Bible.

DR. IAN PAISLEY: "And
it's not the word of man,

it's the word of God.

Now, of course, Rome
used to burn the Bibles.

She used to burn the people
that translated them.

She used to burn the
people that read them.

But that didn't succeed.

So, she decided
upon another scheme.

That she would place
her Jesuit priests

in the training of
Protestant ministers.

And so, into the universities
of Germany, Rome set at work

the whole structure of
unbelieving higher criticism.

And she had in the
universities men

who sought to destroy
belief in the Bible.

And we became cursed with what
was known as higher criticism.

And young men had their
faith in the Bible

destroyed in the universities
and in the training colleges.

And so, the men that
came out to be ordained

didn't believe the book.

They didn't believe the
creeds of the church.

They didn't believe in the
historic Christian faith.

And they set to work
to destroy the faith."

PASTOR DAVID BROWN: With that
spirit of textual criticism

and non-belief in the
inspiration of the word of God,

looking at the Bible just like
any other book, scholars--

and even quote,
Christian scholars--

began to follow that line.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: Textual
criticism in the proper sense

is not necessarily a bad thing.

DR. D.A. WAITE:
Textual criticism

is a word that is used to
assess the value of one

great manuscript over another.

That's what it is.

It's the bringing of
manuscripts together,

and then showing which
is the one to go with

and which is the
one not to go with.

NARRATOR: The practice
of textual criticism

began in the Middle
Ages and grew out

of the conflicts between Rome
and the Protestant Reformation.

It is most often traced
to a 17th century scholar,

named Richard Simon.

DR. H.D. WILLIAMS:
He is the one who

is alleged to have really
begun this whole process.

He's called the father
of textual criticism.

He was a French Roman
Catholic priest.

CHRISTIAN PINTO:
In the world today,

textual criticism can mean
several different things,

depending on who's
using that term

and how it's being applied.

You have textual criticism
in the ordinary sense, which

is simply a process of going
through ancient manuscripts,

collating them, and trying
to remove any errors,

and trying to figure out
what the original text was

and what it should be.

Then you have what is known
as higher criticism, which

is where you give a historical
analysis of the manuscripts.

And then you begin to question
whether or not Moses could have

really written the
book of Genesis,

or whether Peter could have
written the apostles ascribed

to him, and you begin to
question the authorship

and the historical
nature of the Bible.

And this was the
process that is usually

traced to Richard Simon.

NARRATOR: Simon entered
the priesthood in 1670.

He was initially educated
by Jesuit priests

and then later at the
Sorbonne in Paris.

He would go on to enter the
Congregation of the Oratory.

The purpose of the
Oratory was said

to be "to interpose a
barrier to the continuous and

disquieting progress
of Protestantism."

CHRISTIAN PINTO:
All of the orders

that Simon was involved
with-- whether the Jesuits,

or the Sorbonne in Paris,
and then the Oratory--

they were all involved
in variant forms

of the Counter Reformation.

They were all looking
for different ways

to try and overthrow
the Protestant movement.

NARRATOR: Yet Simon's focus
was guided by the Jesuits

from the beginning.

It was they who laid the
foundation for Simon's work

through one of their
original members,

Alfonso Salmeron, who had joined
with Ignatius Loyola in 1534.

We read that, "Salmeron paved
the way for Richard Simon.

The Jesuits introduced into
Catholic reading of the Bible

the parameters of
time, place, context

and semantic structures."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: The idea of
applying principles of time

and context don't necessarily
sound like a bad thing

until you realize how
they were being used

as weapons to try and
undermine the Bible.

One example was a book that
was written by another Roman

Catholic named Isaac La
Peyrere during the same area.

And he had written a book
called Men Before Adam

in 1655, in which he argued that
supposedly new information--

scientific data that had
come to light from Greenland,

and China, and so on-- proved
that men lived on the Earth

as far back as 50,000 BC.

Thus throwing into jeopardy the
traditional date for creation

in Genesis, which goes
back to about 4,000 BC.

NARRATOR: We read that "La
Peyrere deployed the hypothesis

of men before Adam in order
to attack the Calvinist

Method of interpreting
scripture according

to the literal sense."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: And so the
idea of higher criticism,

which grew out of this movement
and is also called historic

criticism, the idea behind it
is to arrange certain dates

in history around the Bible in
such a way to make it appear

that the Bible is not a
historically accurate book

and therefore cannot
possibly be the inspired

inerrant word of God.

That's the whole point of it.

NARRATOR: La Peyrere's work
would have a powerful influence

over Richard Simon,
who would further

the assault against
reform teaching.

We read that, "Simon
sharpened historical criticism

into a weapon that could
be used in the attack

on Protestantism's
most fundamental error,

the doctrine of Sola Scriptura."

CHRISTIAN PINTO:
Sola Scriptura was

one of the mottos
of the reformation

and it means, only
the scripture.

And it's the idea that the
Christian faith should be based

on the teachings of the Bible
alone without any interference

with the doctrines
or teachings of men.

And it's in contrast to the
Roman Catholic teaching, which

says that church tradition
should govern the understanding

of the Bible even
if the two disagree.

NARRATOR: In defense
of his Catholic faith,

Richard Simon wrote that, "The
great changes that have taken

place in the
manuscripts of the Bible

since the first originals
were lost completely

destroy the principle
of the Protestants.

If tradition is not
joined to scripture

there is hardly
anything in religion

that one can
confidently affirm."

But the Bible says of itself
that the scriptures alone

are sufficient for the spiritual
needs of all believers.

The apostle Paul wrote that,
"all scripture is given

by inspiration of God and
is profitable for doctrine,

for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness,

that the man of
God may be perfect,

thoroughly furnished
unto all good works."

Furthermore, God promises that
he will preserve his words

eternally and that
they cannot be lost.

The Psalmist writes, "Thy word
is true from the beginning,

and every one of thy righteous
judgments endureth forever."

Jesus said, "The scriptures
cannot be broken"

and "Heaven and earth
shall pass away,

but my words shall
not pass away.

For all flesh is grass,
and all the glory

of man as the
flower of the grass.

The grass withereth, and the
flower thereof falleth away

but the Word of the
Lord endureth forever."

CHRISTIAN PINTO:

you can define the conflict
between Catholicism

and Protestantism as a
conflict between the authority

of the pope versus the
authority of the Bible.

And this is the whole
reason why the Bible came

to be known as the paper
pope of Protestantism.

That was the name given
to it by the Catholics.

And these arguments
against the Bible

were especially active
in the 19th century,

during the same era that
Constantin von Tischendorf went

searching for his ancient texts.

NARRATOR: The hostility of
Catholics toward the Protestant

Bible was written of by 19th
century historian John Dowling

in his book, The Burning of the
Bibles, where he documented how

Catholics in Champlain, New York
were burning bibles in America

back in 1843.

The beliefs of Catholics during
the 19th and early 20th century

can be shown by the teaching
of Cardinal James Gibbons,

pictured here with President
Theodore Roosevelt.

Gibbons was the
Archbishop of Baltimore

and in his book,
Faith of Our Fathers,

he wrote, "Now the
scriptures alone

do not contain all the truths
which a Christian is bound

to believe because
they do not contain

all the truths necessary
for salvation."

A similar view had been espoused
in England by Cardinal John

Henry Newman,
perhaps the leading

Catholic apologist
of the 19th century.

Speaking of the Bible he said,
"Surely the sacred volume

was never intended to
teach us our creed.

And from the first, it has
been the error of heretics

to attempt of themselves a
work to which they are unequal,

the eliciting of a
systematic doctrine

from the scattered
notices of truth

which Scripture contains."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: Essentially
what Newman is saying

is that the error of
the heretics, so-called,

was that they followed the
example of the ancient Boreans,

who searched the
scriptures daily

to test the things
that they were hearing.

And this is something
that the Church of Rome

has always discouraged.

NARRATOR: One of
Newman's contemporaries

was a renowned priest named
Thomas Edward Bridget, who

said that true faith was
"a surrender of the mind,

to a living authority,
known to be divine.

Not a puzzle over
documents, with the doubt

about correct interpretation."

Even the modern Catholic
Encyclopedia openly

declares that "The supremacy
of the Bible as source of faith

is unhistorical, illogical,
fatal to the virtue of faith,

and destructive of unity."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: So we see
that Rome's view of the Bible

has not changed in 1,000 years.

The reformers in
their day were trying

to recover the ancient
scripture in such a way

that they could have
a full understanding

of the word of God.

But in contrast,
the Church of Rome

went about looking for
weaknesses in the text

so that the Protestant
doctrine of Sola Scriptura

could be overthrown.

That's the difference.

DR. H.D. WILLIAMS: They were
losing people very rapidly

because of the text
that was preserved

by the priesthood of believers.

Because they were losing people
from the Roman Catholic See,

from their authority.

They had to do something
to counter that influence.

NARRATOR: But while they
were fighting against Sola

Scriptura, they were at the
same time arguing in defense

of the Latin Vulgate, which had
been declared by the Council

of Trent to be the only true,
authoritative scripture.

DR. ALAN O'REILLY: And
they also condemned

Luther's conclusion
that Jerome's Vulgate

was a corrupt Bible--
which we know it is--

and they further
condemned Luther's

conclusion that to
produce a pure Bible,

either German or English
or any other language,

you did have to go
back to what today we

would call the traditional text.

That is, for example, the Greek
text of the New Testament,

which is found in
the vast majority

of surviving Greek manuscripts.

NARRATOR: In their introduction
to the Douay-Rheims Bible,

the Jesuit scholars wrote,
"Se see that by all means,

the old vulgar Latin translation
is approved, good, and better

than the Greek text itself and
that there is no cause why it

should give place to any other
text, copies, or readings."

16th century Anglican
scholar, William Whitaker

said that "The Papists contend
that their Latin text is

authentic of itself,
and ought not

to be tried by the
text of the originals."

Meanwhile, Protestant
scholar Francis Turretin

summed up the debate this way.

He said, "The question is
whether the original text,

in Hebrew or in Greek, has
been so corrupted either

by the carelessness of copyists,
or by the malice of the Jews

and heretics that it
can no longer be held

as the judge by which all
versions are to be judged.

The Roman Catholics
affirm this, we deny it."

CHRISTIAN PINTO:
So Rome's position,

according to Turretin, was
that the Greek and the Hebrew

manuscripts had been
so corrupted over time

that they could not be trusted.

And therefore you shouldn't use
those manuscripts to correct

the Latin Vulgate, which is
what Erasmus had done back

right before the
Reformation began.

And that was their main issue.

NARRATOR: We also read that
"In the preface of the Douay,

Roman Catholics contended
that the Latin Vulgate was

translated from the
Hebrew and Greek texts

when they were more pure.

Therefore, many contended
that the Vulgate version

was dictated by the Holy
Spirit, was consequently

of divine authority, and
more to be regarded than even

the original Hebrew
and Greek texts."

Hence, the Jesuit
scholars at Reims

concluded that the Latin
Vulgate is not only better

than all other
Latin translations

but than the Greek
text itself in those

places where they disagree.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: So

against Sola Scriptura were
operating on two fronts.

The first part was to discredit
the Greek and the Hebrew

manuscripts as being so full
of corruptions and errors

that they could not be trusted,
thus proving that the Latin

Vogate alone is
the superior text.

And step two, to argue
that because the Bible is

so difficult to interpret, it
is necessary to rely on church

tradition and the infallible
teachings of the pope.

So this is the
academic environment

that had developed for
several hundred years

before Tischendorf
shows up in 1844.

Now, Tischendorf had embraced
the rescention theory,

this idea that the Bible was
lost and needed to be found.

Then you add to that, you
had Catholic scholars,

like Cardinal
Wiseman, who argued

that the truest
representation of the Bible

would be found in
the Latin Vulgate.

And all of these elements came
together in the 19th century

and this is what
inspired Tischendorf

to take his famous journey.

NARRATOR: Tischendorf's
efforts were clearly

aimed against the
traditional Greek text.

In 1866, he would write that "We
have at last hit upon a better

plan which is to set aside this
Textus Receptus altogether,

and to construct a fresh text."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: The curious
thing about that quote

is that when
Tischendorf says, we

have hit upon a better plan,
who does he mean by we?

It sounds as though he was
working with somebody else

but he doesn't exactly say who.

NARRATOR: For years
prior to his journey,

Tischendorf had been influenced
by a prominent Catholic scholar

named Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman.

Cardinal Weisman
developed a theory

that old Latin texts had been
developed in North Africa

by the second century.

CHRISTIAN PINTO:
Wiseman's assertion

seems to have been an attempt
to try and prove that the Latin

Vulgate was closer to
the original manuscripts

than any known Greek
manuscript at that time.

And it was this theory
that made Tischendorf

partial to the Latin Vulgate.

NARRATOR: We read that,
"In 1842, while in Paris,

Tischendorf prepared an
edition of the New Testament,

intended for the
use of Catholics,

giving the Latin
Vulgate in a Greek text.

Rendered as far as
possible conformable

to it, in parallel columns."

CHRISTIAN PINTO:
So what Tischendorf

did is he developed a
Greek manuscript that

would conform to
the Latin Vulgate.

He essentially reversed the
work of Erasmus of Rotterdam

from 300 years earlier.

Remember, Erasmus had
collated the Greek manuscripts

and then published the
first ever parallel Bible,

with the Greek in one column
and the Latin in the other.

And he used the Greek to
correct the errors in the Latin.

Well, now, hundreds
of years later,

Tischendorf reverses
the process.

He does a parallel Bible,
but he does it the other way.

He uses the Latin to
correct the Greek.

And he did this work for
the Catholic archbishop

of Paris, Archbishop Affre.

And so it shows his
relationship with the Catholic

Church at this time.

It's also worth mentioning that
one of Tischendorf's critics

said that Tischendorf only
understood Greek through Latin.

NARRATOR: Tischendorf would
make his great discovery in 1844

when he arrived at St.
Catherine's Monastery,

at the base of what is
called Mount Sinai in Egypt.

But before he arrived,
he took a journey to Rome

and was received at the Vatican.

In his memoirs, Tischendorf
wrote, "I here pass over

in silence, the interesting
details of my travels.

My audience with the Pope,
Gregory XVI, in May, 1843.

my intercourse with
Cardinal Mezzofanti,

that surprising and
celebrated linguist."

Mezzofanti was famous
for his ability

to speak more than 50
languages fluently.

Tischendorf wrote that,
"Mezzofanti honored me

with some Greek verses
composed in my praise."

CHRISTIAN PINTO:
Tischendorf was well

favored by Rome, which
is odd considering

his status as a
Protestant scholar.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN: I can
never quite figure that out.

Why a Protestant
scholar, or one who

claimed to be a
Protestant scholar,

would be meeting with the
pope over the situation.

There's a lot of
unanswered questions.

CHRISTIAN PINTO:

goes to meet in a private
audience with the pope.

It's like going to meet the
president, or a prime minister,

or someone of that position.

And then we have this famous
Catholic cardinal, Mezzofanti,

writing him a poem in
Greek to praise him

as this great scholar and so on.

It's all very strange.

But Tischendorf was
welcomed into Rome

by some of the leading Catholic
authorities at that time.

In fact, in his
memoirs, he reveals

that it was Archbishop
Affre of Paris for whom he

had prepared the parallel Bible.

That gave him his
recommendation to the Vatican.

And then he was received
by Pope Gregory.

NARRATOR: Tischendorf
wrote, "Gregory XVI,

after a prolonged
audience granted to me

took an ardent interest
in my undertaking."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: Pope Gregory's
interest in Tischendorf

is curious.

Especially when you consider
that it was the same Pope

Gregory that openly condemned
the Protestant Bible

societies of that time.

NARRATOR: In 1843, American
author John Dowling,

wrote that "The present
Pope, Gregory XVI,

and his predecessor
Pope Leo XII,

denounced all Bible societies
declaring that by the Bible's

they distributed they
converted the Gospel of Christ

into a human gospel.

Or, what is still worse,
the gospel of the devil."

In his encyclical against
the Bible societies,

Pope Gregory wrote "We
have taken great pains

to remind the faithful of
the ancient laws concerning

vernacular translations
of the scriptures."

The pope's wording is suspicious
because it was the ancient laws

of the Roman church that
had Bible believers burned

at the stake for reading or
handling the word of God.

But could this have
been what Pope Gregory

was referring to in his writing?

Several years after
Tischendorf's private audience

at the Vatican, it was
discovered that the Inquisition

had continued underground
in the ancient city.

Charles Spurgeon,
known to millions

as the prince of preachers,
documented the manner

of torture that
had been reported

once the papal
dungeons were revealed.

From Spurgeon's publication,
The Sword and the Trowel,

we read that "They invented
ovens, or furnaces, which being

made red-hot, they lowered
the condemned into them,

bound hand and foot,
and immediately

closed over them the
mouth of the furnace.

This barbarous punishment and
was substituted for the burning

pile and in 1849,
these furnaces at Rome

were laid open to
the public view

in the dungeons of the
Holy Roman Inquisition,

near the great church
of the Vatican,

still containing
the calcined bones."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: What's
disturbing is that these things

were revealed in 1849, just
six years after Tischendorf

visited the pope.

And it was only revealed because
the great general, Garibaldi,

and his revolutionaries,
captured Rome that year

and opened the papal dungeons.

But then you have a
quote from W.C. Brownlee

that was published in 1843,

the same year Tischendorf
was at the Vatican.

And Brownlee says,
"The Inquisition--

the infernal
inquisition," he says,

"even at this day is in
full operation in Rome

under the patronage of
Pope Gregory Sixteenth."

The same pope that Constantin
von Tischendorf met with.

So while Tischendorf was in Rome
with his cardinal writing him

poetry to praise
him and so on, there

were people-- some of them
quite probably Christians--

who were still being
tortured for heresy

in the underground
inquisition nearby.

And they were being roasted
alive in these ovens

right next door to the Vatican.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN:
Yes, the inquisition--

actually not just in Italy
but in other places--

went well into the 1800's.

NARRATOR: Discoveries of the
Inquisition during this era

were also exposed by
Doctor H. Grattan Guinness,

in the convent of Santo
Domingo, Mexico in 1861.

He published these photographs
of the remains of victims who

had been walled up
and buried alive.

The expressions of
their torment still

recorded in their countenance.

Charles Spurgeon wrote
that "The Inquisition

was the masterpiece of
infernal craft and malice.

There is a deep and indelible
sentence of damnation written

upon the apostate church for its
more than infernal cruelties.

And the curse is
registered in heaven.

Nor can any pretenses
to present liberality

reverse the condemnation.

Its infmay is engraven
in the rock forever."

PASTOR DAVID BROWN:
Rome did many,

many, many evil
and hateful things.

NARRATOR: Yet somehow,
during this era,

the Protestant Tischendorf
was not only accepted by Rome

but received special
treatment from the Vatican

and her priests.

Tischendorf's cooperation
with the Vatican

was a dramatic departure from
the resistance maintained

by other Protestant
ministers of that era.

Grattan Guinness called Rome
the masterpiece of Satan

and maintained that she had
never repented of her crimes.

In 1873, Charles Spurgeon wrote
that "The superstition of Rome

is the worst of all the evils
which have befallen our race.

May the Lord arise and
sweep it down to the hell

from whence it arose."

Spurgeon was so convicted
against the papacy that he once

declared "Popery is
abhorred of the Lord,

and they who help it wear
the mark of the Beast."

Yet in Rome, Tishcendorf was
not only welcomed by the pope,

but by two of the leading
cardinals at that time.

The first was the well known
linguistic, Mezzofanti,

while the other was a Jesuit
named Cardinal Angelo Mai.

During the 19th century, Mai
was the cardinal librarian

for the Vatican library and
was credited with recovering

many ancient manuscripts that
pertain to church history.

It was said that "There
is not a single century

of the Christian era, from
the second to the seventeenth,

from which he has not
produced important

and previously unknown works.

He had transcribed all with his
own hand entirely by himself."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: This quote
about be Jesuit Cardinal Mai

is very interesting
because it shows

us the nature of the times.

And so you've got
Cardinal Mai there,

who very much like Tischendorf--
Tischendorf is out journeying,

trying to gather all of
these ancient manuscripts--

at the same time,
Cardinal Mai is going

through old Vatican records
and he's producing all

of these works that nobody
had ever seen before,

that have to do with the
history of the Church.

Now what's disturbing
about this,

is that the collective
efforts of both Cardinal

Mai and Tischendorf would
end up dramatically changing

the academic world's view of the
Bible from that time forward.

During the same time that
Tischendorf was discovering

the first manuscript that would
change everyone's perception

about the Greek
text, Cardinal Mai

was in Rome working on
the other manuscript that

would accomplish the same thing.

And that was the Vatican's
version of the Bible,

a codex vaticanus, which today
is considered supreme over

all of the other Greek
biblical manuscripts

anywhere in the world.

VOICE OFFSCREEN: What we have
here is the Vatican manuscript,

also called Codex
B. I have it opened

to a very important section.

And you can see the
Vatican's seal here,

this is an exact facsimile.

NARRATOR: But before
Vaticanus would emerge

to dominate the world
of Biblical scholarship

the travels of Constantine
von Tischendorf

would yield the fruits
of his great ambition.

In his memoirs, he wrote
"It was in April, 1844

that I embarked at
Leghorn for Egypt.

The desire which I felt to
discover some precious remains

of any manuscripts, more
especially Biblical, of a date,

which would carry us back to
the early times of Christianity,

was realized beyond
my expectations.

It was at the foot
of Mount Sinai,

in the convent of
Saint Catherine

that I discovered the
pearl all my researches."

Tischendorf tells of how he
discovered this manuscript

in a trash basket
inside the convent.

The monks had been using its
pages as fuel for the fire.

He wrote "I perceived in
the middle of the great hall

a large and wide basket,
full of old parchments.

And the librarian told me that
two heaps of papers like this

had been already
committed to the flames.

What was my surprise to find
a mid this heap of papers,

a considerable number of sheets
of a copy of the Old Testament

in Greek, which
seemed to me to be one

of the most ancient
that I had ever seen."

PASTOR DAVID BROWN: He's
visiting the monastery in 1844.

And he is under the
patronage, sponsorship,

of Frederick Augustus,
kind of Saxony.

And while he's there, he
discovers an old manuscript

in a rubbish basket
and they were basically

using it as tinder
to start fires.

NARRATOR: According to his own
testimony, once he recogniz

the manuscript for
its ancient value,

Tischendorf responded
quickly and was

able to rescue many of the
pages from being burned.

He wrote "The authorities of the
convent allowed me to possess

myself of a third
of these parchments

as they were destined
for the fire.

But I could not
get them to yield

up possession of the remainder.

The too lively satisfaction
which I had displayed,

had arroused their
suspicions as to the value

of this manuscript."

In total, Tischendorf
recovered some 43 pages.

When he returned
from his journey,

he chose to publish the
pages, but secretly.

He wrote "I did not divulge
the name of the place

where I had found it in
the hopes of returning

and recovering the rest
of the manuscript."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: So Tischendorf
published his Old Testament

portion of the Sinai
Codex, but he continued

to believe that
the New Testament

portion of the manuscript
was probably still

somewhere inside St.
Catharine's monastery.

Then he says he
returned again in 1853

and didn't find anything.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN: So he
finally goes back in 1859.

He's able to get,
well, the remainder.

NARRATOR: It was during
Tischendorf's third journey

to St. Catharine's
monastery in 1859

that he made his most
famous discovery.

CHRISTIAN PINTO:
Tischendorf says

that he was taking a walk
with a Steward of the convent

and that they returned to
his room at some point.

They were talking
about the Septuagint

and he says I, too,
have read a Septuagint,

meaning a Greek version
of the Old Testament.

So then he pulls out this bulky
manuscript, that was supposedly

wrapped in red cloth, and
shows it to Tischendorf.

NARRATOR: Tischendorf wrote,
"I unrolled the cover,

and discovered to my
great surprise not only

those very fragments
which, 15 years before,

I had taken out of
the basket, but also,

other parts of the Old Testament
and the New Testament complete.

I knew that I held
in my hand the most

precious Biblical
treasure in existence.

A document, whose
age and importance

exceeded that of all the
manuscripts which I had ever

examined during 20 years
of study on the subject."

Tischendorf would
transcribe and eventually

publish the manuscript under
the name Codex Sinaiticus.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN: In
relationship to the Sinaiticus

manuscript, it's republished
by Kirsa Blake in the 1800's.

In the Old Testament portion
you can see what appears to be,

even, burn marks on some of
the leaves that were recovered.

VOICE OFFSCREEN:

like he pulled that right
out of the fire, doesn't it?

PASTOR DAVID BROWN:
Yeah, it does.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN:
Yeah, it does.
See?

See?

VOICE OFFSCREEN: So this
certainly confirms his story,

or it seems to.

That they were throwing
these pages into the flames.

PASTOR DAVID BROWN:
Well they were using it

like we use newspaper
to start a fire.

This was old, it
was brittle, so it

made good to start a fire
there in the cool mornings

and evenings at the monastery.

[APPLAUSE]

[LAUGHTER]

-I'm very thankful,
and grateful,

for this wonderful privilege.

NARRATOR: Once Sinaiticus
was fully published,

Tischendorf became a
world famous scholar,

practically overnight.

Nearly all the courts of
Europe showered honors

and distinctions on him
for his great discovery.

So much so, said his
son-in-law, that they

could not all fit
on one man's chest.

Oxford and Cambridge
universities

honored him with
their highest degrees.

In the midst of all this,
a copy of Sinaiticus

was sent to the pope
who wrote Tischendorf

an autographed letter
congratulating him.

Tischendorf even
mentioned how an old man

of distinguished learning
had said "I would rather

have discovered this Sinaitic
manuscript than the Koh i noor

of the Queen of England."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: The Koh i noor
was the famed diamond of India

that was in possession
of the English throne.

And it's interesting
because that's

exactly how Tischendorf
described his manuscript.

As a diamond, he says,
in his possession.

And for him, it was.

NARRATOR: Because of
the Codex Sinaiticus,

Constantin von
Tischendorf would go on

to become one of the most famous
men of the academic world,

and perhaps the most celebrated
palaeographer of all time.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: And it's
an interesting contrast.

On the one hand, you've
got the reformers,

who are being persecuted and
killed by the Church of Rome

because of their faith
in the word of God.

Well on the other hand,
you've got Tischendorf, who's

being lauded by the pope
and celebrated like a prince

upon the earth
for his discovery.

NARRATOR: In the

the scripture says, concerning
the Great Harlot Mystery,

Babylon, that "By thy sorceries
were all nations deceived."

As part of their
Counter Reformation,

the Jesuits created
many fraudulent

and forged documents.

When they could not persuade
others by ordinary means

they would literally
create historic evidence

to support their claims.

Sometimes they dug up
old bones, pretending

that they belonged
to some saint.

And sometimes they
created fake documents.

19th century British
historian, Thomas Carlyle,

said that "Jesuitism
has poisoned

the wellsprings of truth
in the whole world."

Yet long before the
Jesuit order was formed,

Rome herself had
an ancient practice

of fraud and deception.

VOICE OFFSCREEN:
What was the purpose

of creating all these forgeries?

DR. HENRY HUDSON: Well, I
think it was enabling the pope,

the claims-- the papal claims--
to having absolute power.

Anything that could
buttress those claims.

And that's why they came in.

NARRATOR: Perhaps the
most famous forgery

in Rome's long history was
the donation of Constantine,

a document alleging that the
emperor Constantine the Great

gave all the lands of
the Western Roman Empire

to the pope as the
vicar of the Son of God.

DR. HENRY HUDSON: The donation
of Constantine, according

to Renaissance scholars who
first began to expose some

of these documents-- Lawrence
Lavallo for example--

tells us that that
document could not have

been written in
the fourth century.

NARRATOR: Today it is agreed
by Catholic and Protestant

scholars alike that the
donation was a forgery.

Most likely created between the
eighth and ninth century AD.

Developed alongside the
donation, where the Decretals

of Isidore, also known
as the False Decretals.

This elaborate forgery
involved a series of letters

from early figures
in Church history.

From Clement, in
the first century,

to Gregory the Great in the
sixth and seventh century.

The letters filled
more than 700 pages

and were cleverly interwoven
with real historic documents

to give them credibility.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: The diabolical
genius of the False Decretals

is that it was truth
mixed with lies.

And it was very
elaborately done.

DR. HENRY HUDSON: If you're
going to the 11th century

when you have Gratian and his
compilation of the cannons,

you'll discover that in
support of papal power,

out of something
like 330 quotations,

313 of those
sources of authority

come from those false,
distorted documents.

DR. RONALD COOKE: The
Jesuits held them back,

but they finally came to view
that many of these documents

were forgeries and
they were forged

specifically to give Rome power.

And so that they would be
looked upon as the true Church

and as the seat of the
papacy and that this

was what the church
had written about

and what the church
supported when

in fact they were all forged.

NARRATOR: The
Decretals of Isidore

became the cornerstone of canon
law during the Middle Ages.

They would be used to deceive
the church for more than 600

years until they were
finally exposed by Calvinous

scholar, David Blondell in 1628.

But the false Decretals and
the donation of Constantine

are said to be just two of the
countless forgeries created

by Rome.

DR. HENRY HUDSON: They're
all basically the same.

They're the same as the Dictatus
Papae of Gregory VII, in which

they are claims made
about papl power.

NARRATOR: Pope Gregory
VII was perhaps

the most notorious
forger ever admitted

to by Catholic historians.

In the 11th century, he
drafted his Dictatus,

or list, of papal privileges.

Among his 27 points, he
declared the following.

"The pope can be judged
by no one on earth.

The Roman church
has never erred,

nor can it err, until
the end of time.

The pope alone can dethrone
emperors and kings,

and absolve their
subjects from allegiance."

And, "All princes are
obliged to kiss his feet."

To support these
ideas, Gregory relied

upon the forged
documents of the past,

but chose to go even farther
and create his own history

for the church and the world.

In the book Vicars of Christ,
former Jesuit priest Peter de

Rosa writes of Pope Gregory
VII and his school of forgers.

He says, "For seven
centuries, the Greeks

had called Rome the
home of forgeries.

Whenever they tried
talking with Rome,

the popes brought
out forged documents

which the Greeks,
naturally, had never seen."

De Rosa says "Gregory went
way beyond the Donation

of Constantine.

He had a whole school of forgers
under his very nose turning out

document after document, with
the papal seal of approval

to cater for his every need.

"Pope Gregory might
require justification

for some action against
a prince or bishop.

Very well, these
prelates literally

produced the
appropriate document.

No need for research, it was
all done on the premises.

Many earlier documents
were touched up,

to make them say the opposite
of what they said originally.

Some of these earlier documents
were themselves forgeries.

This instant method
of inventing history

was marvelously successful,
especially as the forgeries

were at once inserted
into canon law.

Thus was accomplished
the quietest and longest

lasting of all revolutions.

It was all done on paper.

DR. RONALD COOKE: They
propagated deceptions early on.

And I believe those
deceptions continue

right up into the 20th century.

NARRATOR: Evidence that
Rome continued her forgeries

into modern times
can be shown in

the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.

In 1873, Charles
Spurgeon documented

how the relic department
of the Vatican

had been exposed for
manufacturing false relics

and presenting them as the
bones of various saints of old.

We read that "so far back as
1828, this trade was going on.

With pieces of bones of sheep,
and hares, or of human bones

taken from the
catacombs, but such as

were probably those of pagans.

Certainly not of
saints and martyrs,

whose names they
affixed to them."

Spurgeon went on to say
that "The Jesuits play

a prominent part in
these transactions,

as they do in most
Catholic affairs."

Then, in the 20th century, it
appears that Jesuit deception

played a role in
the 1912 discovery

of the Piltdown Man, which
was declared to be the missing

link that would prove
Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

But 40 years after
its discovery,

Piltdown was proven
to be a hoax.

The chief culprit
in the deception

was said to be Charles
Dawson, an amateur British

archaeologist who
sought fame and glory.

Yet Dawson did not work alone.

His helper was a Jesuit priest
named Teilhard de Chardin.

In 1980, Harvard Professor
Stephen Jay Gould

would publish his belief
that Teilhard himself was

a co-conspirator
with Dawson, who

helped him create
the Piltdown hoax.

Yet another Jesuit trained
priest, named George Lemaitre,

would further these
ideas and develop

the Big Bang theory in 1931.

It might be said that no
doctrine has been more

devastating to
faith in the Bible

than Darwin's
Theory of Evolution.

But was it only coincidence
that Charles Darwin himself

published Origin of the
Species in 1859, the same year

that Tischendorf discovered
Codex Sinaiticus?

Just as La Peyrere's theory
about men before Adam

worked together with Richard
Simon's historic criticism,

so Darwin's theory of evolution
would work alongside Codex

Sinaiticus to destroy the
faith of countless millions

in the scripture as the inspired
and inerrant word of God.

It's important to consider that
from the period of 1828 to 1912

it can be shown that the
Vatican and her Jesuit priests

were involved in
fakery and forgery.

This is significant because
this time frame includes

the same period that Tischendorf
was working with Rome.

After Tischendorf revealed
his Codex Sinaiticus

he was hailed as a great
scholar and greeted

with laudation across Europe.

-(LAUGHING) Oh,
cheers my good friend.

NARRATOR: But shortly after
the work was published

it was challenged by a
prominent expert in paleography.

His name was
Constantine Simonides.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: Constantine
Simonides is undoubtedly

the forgotten link in the
history of Codex Sinaiticus.

And it's because he waged
an open and a public debate

against Tischendorf
for about four years,

arguing that Codex Sinaiticus
was not an ancient manuscript.

And the more you
study Simonides you

realize that he was a very
important figure at that time.

NARRATOR: Alexander
Von Humboldt declared

that Simonides was an enigma.

Others believed
his understanding

of ancient languages
to be ingenious.

A 19th century
publication said of him

"Dr. Simonides is
a Greek by birth

and he speaks and writes
the classic language

of his forefathers with
fluency, purity, and elegance."

From his uncle, "Simonides
thoroughly acquired

the art of paleography and
became so great a proficient

therein that few surpass him
either in the practice of it,

or in the diagnosis
of manuscripts."

CHRISTIAN PINTO:
Simonides had quite

a reputation in
the 19th century.

On the one hand, he was
a respected paleographer.

But on the other hand, he had
kind of a cloak and dagger

history and was looked upon as
sort of a Greek Indiana Jones.

Involved not only with
ancient manuscripts

but also fighting battles
as a Greek patriot

against the Ottoman
Turkish empire.

Which is an important part
of understanding who he was.

-Come, my brother, we shall
avenge the blood of our fathers

on this Turkish invader.

Let us be strong in our
weakness and with God's help,

we shall prevail.

[CHEERING CROWD]

[GUN SHOT]

NARRATOR: One of the
newspapers of the time

reported that "the
escapades of Mr. Simonides

extend over nearly 20 years.

In Alexandria, he contrived
to quarrel with some Arabs.

Pistolled two of them,
received some ugly wounds

on the head and
face from a third.

In Macedonia, his
native country,

he succeeded in getting
up a little insurrection

among his countrymen,
who joined him

in the leadership of
the patriot bands.

He fell on a detachment
of Turkish soldiers,

drove them into a river, and
destroyed some 150 of them."

CHRISTIAN PINTO:
These are the kinds

of stories recorded
about Simonides.

As a Greek patriot who was
still fighting against the Turks

in a conflict that dated
all the way back to the fall

of Constantinople in
1453, when the Turks

invaded the ancient capital
of the Greek Orthodox empire.

In the 19th century, the Greeks
remembered Constantinople

as if it had just
happened the day before.

-Constantinople
will be ours again.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: Simonides
was apparently involved

in continued battles
with the Turks

and controversies against the
Latinizers, or Roman Catholics,

as he called them.

Because both the Turks
and the Catholic Church

had fought against the
Greek Orthodox kingdom.

And so, for Sinonides, the
Turks and the Catholics

were both ancient enemies.

And this conflict with
Rome in particular

would have everything to
do with his controversy

against Tischendorf.

And then as a scholar,
Simonides was equally

in the thick of debates
about ancient manuscripts.

He had presented his
work before kings,

nobles, foreign
ministers, diplomats.

He'd sold a number
of manuscripts

to the British Museum, and
other prominent institutions

in Europe.

So he was involved
in the highest levels

of the academic
world at that time.

NARRATOR: Simonides owned a
collection of more than 5,000

ancient manuscripts
that he had partly

inherited from his uncle.

As he traveled across Europe
he presented these works

at libraries and universities.

Their content often
sparked intense debate.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: Simonides'
debates usually centered

around the understanding
of ancient languages.

And he generally believed
that his own knowledge

was superior to
those around him,

although he did not have a
reputation for arrogance.

But while he was in Germany,
he got into a vicious conflict

with the scholars at the
University of Leipzig.

And it was there in
1855 that he made

enemies with Von Tischendorf.

So now, years later, when he
comes forward and questions

Codex Sinaiticus,

he does so as
Tischendorf's old nemesis.

NARRATOR: Simonides claimed
that Codex Sinaiticus was

no ancient manuscript at all,
but a modern work created

by himself and two
other Greeks in 1840.

-[LAUGHTER]

NARRATOR: While Tischendorf
was in the midst of enjoying

his fame, the story
of Simonides began

to be published in
the London newspapers.

-Simonides.

NARRATOR: Needless to say,
Tischendorf was furious.

-Idiot.

NARRATOR: What followed
would be a public debate that

would continue in
a variety of London

newspapers for the
next two years.

In July of 1861, a publication
called the Literary Gazette

reported that "We understand
that in literary circles,

a rumor prevails that the
manuscript now publishing

by the Russian government,
under the direction of M.

Tischendorf, purporting
to be a manuscript

Bible of the fourth century
is not an ancient manuscript

but is an entirely modern
production, written

by a gentleman now alive, who
will shortly take measures

to establish his claim
to the authorship.

The manuscript is known
as the Codex Sinaiticus,

and has attracted a large amount
of attention throughout Europe.

Should the rumor prove to be
correct, as we believe it will,

the disclosures
that will follow,

must be of the greatest
interest to archaeology."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: In
his letters, Simonides

says that the controversy
began over Codex Sinaiticus

when he first saw the
manuscript in Liverpool in 1860.

And then it was
the following year

that the newspapers
got hold of the story.

So this story first
appears in 1861.

But Simonides did not
publish his side of the story

until 1862.

The only reason he did so
is because he was drawn

in to the conflict by two
of the prominent scholars

at that time.

NARRATOR: The two
scholars in question

were Samuel P. Tregelles,
and Fenton John Anthony Hort.

Fragellis and Hort believed
Sinaiticus to be real

and took sides against
Simonides almost immediately.

Fragellis wrote that
"the story of Simonides

was as false and
absurd as possible."

In response, Simonides defended
his argument, as published

in The Guardian newspaper,
in September of 1862.

Where he said "When
about two years ago, I

saw the first facsimiles of
Tischendorf, which were put

into my hand at Liverpool by
Mr. Newton, a friend of Dr.

Tregelles.

I at once recognized
my own work,

as I immediately told him."

In the book Codex Sinaiticus
and the Simonides Affair,

author JK Elliot confirms
that Simonides spoke

of his authorship to a man
named JE Hodgkin in 1860,

and in a letter to Sir Thomas
Phillips on August 2, 1861.

Simonides claimed that the
manuscript had not been created

with any intention to deceive
but was intended by himself

and his uncle as a gift to Czar
Nicholas the First of Russia.

To prove his claims,
Simonides challenged

Tischendorf to a public debate.

Yet Tischendorf
refused to take part.

About this, Simonides wrote "The
real test of the genuineness

of the Codex Sinaiticus
is neglected.

The public were assured
that in May, Tischendorf

was to be in London,
armed with a portion

at least of his great codex.

I have waited in England,
hoping to have the opportunity

of meeting him, face to
face, to prove him in error.

But May has come and gone, and
the discover has not appeared.

Let the favourers of the
antiquity of the manuscript

persuade him to come at
once, and brave the ordeal,

or else forever hold his peace."

Yet despite the
evasiveness of Tischendorf,

most of the
newspapers in England

defended him and denounced
Simonides as a fraud.

The attacks were
almost fanatical

and often unreasonable.

Could Tischendorf's
relationship with Rome

have had something
to do with it?

During this same era,
Protestant historian JA Wiley

wrote about the Jesuit's
influence in English media.

In his book on the Jesuit's
morals, maxims, and plots,

he said that "There are two
institutions in especial

to which the Jesuits
will lay siege.

These are the press
and the pulpit.

The press of Great Britain is
already manipulated by them

to an extent of which the
public but little dream.

The whole English press of
the world is supervised,

and the word is passed
round how writers, speakers,

and causes are to be handled.

And applause for
condemnation dealt out

just as it may accord with the
interests and wishes of Rome."

Yet Simonides was not
without his supporters.

Another paper, called
The Literary Churchman,

questioned the antiquity
of Codex Sinaiticus

and argued that Simonides
should be heard.

They said, "For
ourselves, we must

profess entire impartiality.

Though we were quite ready
from the first to admit

the importance of the discovery
of Tischendorf we are not

prepared, at this moment, to
say, with the Dr. Tregelles,

that the statements of Simonides
are 'as false and absurd

as possible.' Tischendorf
applies these terms,

false and absurd, just
now to Tregelles himself."

The reason Tischendorf attacked
Tregelles was because he

disagreed with him about the
writing of Codex Sinaiticus.

Tregelles said, "On one
point, I believe that I differ

materially from Tischendorf,
as to the writing

of the manuscript.

He thinks that he sees
traces of various hands

having been employed in such
a way that a change of writer

must have frequently
taken place.

I believe that the difference is
to be attributed to the scribe

having more or less
ink in his style,

the ink being more
or less thick,

and the surface of the
vellum slightly varying."

In other words, the scribe dips
his stylus into an ink well.

And when he first
begins to write,

there's a lot of ink on it.

But sooner or later
the ink runs thin.

In places where
the ink ran thin,

Tischendorf believed that this
signified a change of writers,

and hence the passage of time.

Tregelles, on the
other hand, believed

that it was the
same scribe, it's

just that he sometimes
ran low on ink.

That was the difference.

But when you factor in that
Tischendorf spreads his scribes

and correctors from the
fourth century all the way

to the seventh century,
a span of some 300 years,

you're left wondering
just how precise

the scientific methods
were that they employed.

Also, consider that
similar contentions

are made about
ancient bones that

are dug up out of the ground.

Where the scientists
tell us that these

are millions of years
old and so forth.

Do they really have the
ability to date bones that way?

And did Tischendorf
really have the ability

to date ancient manuscripts?

After the initial attacks
against him began,

Simonides asserted that
these scholars, in reality,

knew little or nothing
about ancient manuscripts.

In response to one
of his critics,

he wrote, "Neither
you nor Tischendorf

possess the true knowledge
of paleographical science.

You have only learned to say
at random this is genuine,

and this is spurious.

But you do not know the reason."

This comment might be brushed
aside but for the often

repeated testimony
that Simonides exceeded

his contemporaries
in the expertise

of manuscript evidence.

James Farrer, in his 1907
book on literary forgeries

wrote that "Tischendorf was
only the senior of Simonides

by five years and in the
science of paleography

had neither his knowledge
nor his experience."

Another scholar, whose
testimony was chiefly regarded,

was Henry Bradshaw,
keeper of manuscripts

at the Cambridge
University library.

Bradshaw sided with Tischendorf.

And once this was
known, he was confronted

in person by Simonides.

In a letter describing the
encounter, Bradshaw wrote,

"Dr. Simonides wrote to me,
to convince me and my friends

that it was quite
possible for him

to have written the
volume in question.

He had invited some of
us to Christ's College

to discuss matters fairly.

He could speak and understand
English pretty well

but his friend was with him
to interpret and explain.

They really seemed to believe
that all people in the West

were is ignorant of Greek
as the Greeks are of Latin.

But the great question was,
how do you satisfy yourselves

of the genuineness
of any manuscript?

I first replied that it was
really difficult to define.

That it seemed to be more a kind
of instinct than anything else.

Dr. Simonides and his
friend readily caught

at this as too much
like vague assertion

and they naturally
ridiculed any such idea.

But I further said
that I had lived

for six years past in the
constant, almost daily

habit of examining manuscripts."

Bradshaw then applied
this principle

to his opinion of
Codex Sinaiticus.

When Simonides
objected, Bradshaw said,

"I told him, as
politely as I could,

that I was not to be
convinced against the evidence

of my senses."

CHRISTIAN PINTO: So Bradshaw
essentially admitted

that there was no
real scientific proof

as to the age of
Codex Sinaiticus.

And he ultimately admitted
that all he trusted in

were his senses,
or his instincts,

about the manuscript.

And Bradshaw is very significant
because it was his reputation

as a scholar that
really compelled

people to embrace
Tischendorf's Codex.

NARRATOR: Bradshaw
further said that "Dr.

Simonides always
maintained that Mt.

Athos Bible, meaning Codex
Sinaiticus, written in 1840

for the emperor of Russia was
not meant to deceive anyone.

That it was professor
Tischendorf's ignorance

and inexperience which
rendered him so easily

deceived where no
deception was intended."

Mount Athos was the
location where Simonides

claimed he had
created the Codex.

He provided many details for how
the manuscript had been written

and how it came to
be at Mount Sinai.

He also provided many names of
those in the Greek world, who

he said could confirm that
he created the manuscript.

But strangely, most
of these details

were never investigated
either by the supporters

of Tischendorf or by the
newspapers of the time.

In 1907, James Farrer wrote that
the controversy "cannot be said

to have been settled by the mere
opinions Tregelles or Bradshaw,

who examined the codex two
months before Simonides had

made his claim to
it as his work,

so that they had no reason to
examine it with suspicion."

But could there have
been some other motive

that drove the critical
scholars at this time?

Simonides was a real threat
to the academic establishment

of Western Europe.

If what he claimed was
true, it would have shown

that Tregelles, Bradshaw,
Hort, and Tischendorf

knew little or nothing
about dating ancient texts.

So you can imagine how hard
they fought to discredit him.

Not only that, but Simonides
was working at the time

with a man named
Joseph Mayer, who

was the founder of the
Maery Museum in Liverpool.

And while there, Mr. Mayer had
him come and examine a series

of ancient Egyptian scrolls that
he had purchased years before.

So Mr. Mayer brings
Simonides to the museum

and what he uncovered were
first century fragments

and parchments that shattered
some of the claims that were

being made by the
higher critics.

He found a first
century fragment

of the Gospel of
Matthew that was dated

within 15 years of the
ascension of Christ.

And this proved that Matthew
was the first gospel, not Mark,

and that it was originally
written in Greek, not in Hebrew

or Aramaic as the
critics had speculated.

Also, he displayed a
first century scroll

that contained 1 John 5:7,
the Johannine Comma, which

is a hotly disputed verse
among higher critics.

And this proved
that they were wrong

and that the verse was not
invented in later centuries,

as they had been saying.

And this was on display
at Cambridge University

and then at the Royal
Society in London.

And if you read the
accounts, these things

were so controversial that
some later historians tried

to claim that Simonides had
sold this scroll of the Gospel

of Matthew to Mr. Mayer as some
kind of forgery or something.

But if you read the newspaper
accounts, it's very clear.

Mr. Mayer acknowledged
that, in fact, he

had purchased the
scroll years before he

ever met Constantine Simonides.

So there was a lot of propaganda
and false accusation that

came against Simonides because
these discoveries were so

threatening to what the
critics wanted to believe.

In December of 1862,
the London review

wrote that "The few
believers in Simonides

represented him as a man whose
towering genius had aroused

the envy, alike of Grecian
professors, German students,

and English librarians,
and banded them together

in a conspiracy to crush him."

In December of
1862, a publication

called The Brighton Observer
reported that "Professor

Tischendorf having visited the
Holy Land, returned to Europe

with a voluminous
manuscript that he obtained

from the library of the
monastery of Mount Sinai.

The earliest known
copy of the Bible.

In time one of the parts fell
into the hands of Simonides,

who at once recognized
it as a manuscript

he had himself executed.

He made his assertion
public that the Codex

Sinaiticus had been
written by himself.

But Tischendorf and the
learned men of Germany

refused to recognize
the claims of Simonides

and continued its publication.

Things went on this way, some
persons believing Simonides,

some Tischendorf, when suddenly
a Greek Archimandrite wrote

to the English papers from
Alexandria, corroborating

the statement of Simonides."

And stating that he
remembered seeing Simonides

engaged in writing out
the copy of the Bible

in question in the ancient
Greek characters on Mount Athos.

The Greek monk
mentioned in the article

was a friend of Simonides
whose name was Kallinikos.

Kallinikos wrote a
series of letters

to the English
newspapers confirming

the story of Simonides and
denouncing Tischendorf, whom he

called "The master and pupil of
all guile, and all wickedness."

In one of his letters, published
in The Literary Churchmen,

Kallinikos wrote "I repeat
that the manuscript in dispute

is the work of the
unwearied Simonides,

and of no other person.

A portion of this was secretly
removed from Mount Sinai,

by Professor
Tischendorf, in 1844.

The rest, with
inconceivable recklesness,

he mutilated and tampered
with, according to his liking,

in the year 1859.

Some leaves he
destroyed, especially

such as contained the
Acrostics of Simonides."

What's interesting is
Kallinikos' mentioned

of how Tischendorf
destroyed the pages that

had the markings of
Simonides on them.

Which may explain why some
of the pages were burned.

NARRATOR: It's important to
remember that to this day

the monks at Mount Sinai
deny Tischendorf's story

and his claim that he found the
manuscript in a rubbish basket.

So where would the burned
pages of the manuscript

have come from?

Is it possible that Tischendorf
burned parts of them

to destroy the
markings of Simonides

as Kallinikos suggests?

And this might
explain why he came up

with a story about
the monks throwing

the pages into
the fire later on.

A story which nobody
really seems to believe.

Kallinikos claimed
that he himself

had been at St.
Catharine's monastery

when Tischendorf was there

and that Tischendorf took the
first pages of the manuscript

without permission.

He said, "I further declare that
the Codex which Dr. Tischendorf

obtained is the identical codex
which Simonides wrote inasmuch

as I saw it in the
hands of Tischendorf

and recognized the work."

Kallinikos also claimed that
the manuscript had been washed

with lemon juice and herbs
to weaken the appearance

of the letters and to give
it a more ancient look.

In response to these accusations
the supporters of Tischendorf

insisted that Simonides had
forged the letters themselves,

and they claimed that Kallinikos
was a fictional character.

Yet in his book, James Ferrar
tells us that Kallinikos was

indeed a real person and that
his letters cannot be brushed

aside as the testimony
of a fabulous being.

Yet the letters of
Kallinikos bear within them

an almost prophetic
warning about the codex.

He wrote to the
newspapers in 1862

that "you will greatly sin
in foisting on the world

a new manuscript as an old one.

And especially a manuscript
containing the Holy Scriptures.

Injury to the church must
accrue from all this,

even from the evidently numerous
corrections of the manuscript.

Tischendorf
originally documented

some 14,800 corrections.

Today, the Codex
Sinaiticus has its home

at the British
Library in London.

In 2009, they finished the
Codex Sinaiticus Project

which was aimed
at fully examining

Tischendorf's famous manuscript.

In 2008, we interviewed
Doctor Juan Garces,

one of the curators
of the project,

while the work was
still in progress.

-Part of the Codex
Sinaiticus Project

is to gather all the material,
commission top scholars,

to go through that material
and provide reports.

To sit around a table and
discuss it and publish it all.

First of all the
documents, but also

the history.

The great historical
account of how

it came from St.
Catharine's monastery.

I think the great
role of this project

is to produce this
history, which hasn't been

written, as we all
agree, well enough.

So I hope in 2009, July, we will
be able to tell the full story.

INTERVIEWER (OFFSCREEN):
Is there any truth

to the assertion that
Von Tischendorf found

the first manuscript
in a trash barrell?

-He said in his book that
he found it in a basket.

But, again, this is
one of the many voices

that make the whole
of the history.

And I'm in no
position to confirm

that as being probable or not.

NARRATOR: While we were
suspicious of this answer when

we heard it, we chose to
wait until they finished

their research before
jumping to a conclusion.

Yet incredibly, once the
British Library published

their website, we found
that they omitted most all

of the documented history
about Codex Sinaiticus.

They ignored Tischendorf's
own testimony

about finding the manuscript
in a rubbish basket.

Instead, they claim
that the monks

brought it to his
attention in 1844.

And while they said they were
going to tell the full story,

their website makes no mention
of the four year controversy

with Constantine Simonides.

We also spoke with Doctor Scott
McKendrick, the head of Western

Manuscripts, about
the comparison

between Sinaiticus and
the Codex Vaticanus.

-They're different also
in one critical way,

in that Sinaiticus-- or two
ways, actually, I should say.

Two ways.

One is that Vaticanus does not
have the extent of correction.

That's a very
critical difference.

Sinaiticus is the most corrected
manuscript, Greek manuscript,

of the scriptures.

The second is that Vaticanus now
has a very strange appearance.

When you look at it,
as a manuscript expert,

although you know
that people tell you

that it's a fourth
century manuscript,

it actually looks like a
fifteenth century manuscript.

And there's one very
simple reason for that.

Is that, almost the entire
text has been overwritten

by a fifteenth century scribe.

Not only that, he's added in
fifteenth century decoration,

titling, and so forth.

So it has a very
strange appearance.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that
the reason Codex Vaticanus has

a strange and even
newer appearance

is that it may not be a
truly ancient manuscript?

The earliest recorded
date for Vaticanus

is 1475 AD, when it
was first entered

into the record of
the Vatican Library.

The manuscript had formerly
been rejected by Erasmus

and the reformers because
they believed it was corrupt.

Yet somehow, the warnings
of the Reformation

were completely
ignored by Tischendorf

and the scholars
who supported him.

They all embraced Vaticanus
without questioning

its authenticity

or considering that
it may have been

one of Rome's many
historic forgeries.

Among this company of
scholars was FHA Scrivener,

another prominent
academic who also

opposed Constantine Simonides.

CHRISTIAN PINTO:
The strange thing

about all of these guys,
Bradshaw, Scribner, Tregelles,

Hort, all of them who supported
Codex Vaticanus and who

questioned
Constantine Simonides.

It's understandable that
they would question Simonides

because he had been
accused of forgery.

That makes sense.

That they would take the time
to investigate his claims.

But why they did not apply the
same standard to the Vatican--

when the Vatican has a much
longer and much more provable

history of forgery
and fakery and fraud--

why they didn't apply the
same standard when they were

examining Codex Vaticanus
just doesn't make any sense.

And in fact if you study
what happened when Tregelles,

for example, when he goes
to the Vatican library

to examine Codex
Vaticanus, the priest there

behaved in a very
strange manner.

And he said while he
was looking at the Codex

there were priests in the room
and they were making noise

and so on to try
and distract him.

And he said that if he spent
too much time looking at any one

page, for too long
and studying it,

they would come to and it away.

Almost as though
they didn't want

him to have an opportunity
to study it too closely.

NARRATOR: Among the more
startling features of Vaticanus

are its many omissions.

-In the Gospels
alone it leaves out

237 words, 452 clauses
and 748 whole sentences.

And other manuscripts agree
that those things are there.

NARRATOR: While Vaticanus
is known for its omissions,

Sinaiticus is famous for it's
more than 14,000 corrections.

Many more than the
average biblical codex.

While Tischendorf reported
some 14,800 corrections,

once the British library's
project was complete,

the number was
inflated dramatically.

In this BBC documentary the
latest number of corrections

is given by Doctor McKendrick
along with the theological

conclusions they
are said to imply.

-On closer inspection, the
text of the Codex Sinaiticus

is littered with revisions.

It is history's most
altered Biblical manuscript

and within those changes lie
it's real theological secrets.

-It has approximately
23,000 corrections

in all that survives, which
is an extraordinary rate

of correction.

It means that on
average there are

about 30 corrections
on each page.

-Given the quality
of the calligraphy,

scholars was surprised
to find so many changes.

Many scribes wrote for money.

They wrote quickly, which meant
they sometimes made errors.

But 23,000 corrections can't
be explained in this way.

There have to be
theological reasons too.

If the Biblical
text could vary, it

couldn't be the
immutible word of God.

What the Codex
Sinaiticus was revealing

was the instability
of the story.

-This volume is the
oldest surviving copy

of the New Testament, complete.

This is the ancestor
of all the Bibles

that everybody else
has in the world.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: So
right there notice

the conclusion that
the BBC is giving.

They're saying that if this
oldest Bible, supposedly,

had all these mistakes
and variance in it,

then that proves it
cannot be the immutable,

inerrant word of God, hence
confirming what the Jesuits,

and the Vatican, and all
the Catholic scholars,

and the higher critics had been
arguing for hundreds of years

in their attempts to
destroy the process

of doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

NARRATOR: This same BBC
documentary even goes on

to show how the influence
of Codex Sinaiticus

would specifically undermine
the Protestant faith

in the King James Bible.

-Here was a manuscript that
offered unique insights

into scripture and which made
scholars re-evaluate evaluate

the Bible that Victorian
Christians had relied on.

-The King James Bible, sturdy
and black on the shelves

was thought to be perfect
inerrant by many people

across the English
speaking world, which

was mostly Bible
believing Protestants.

But the fact of the matter
was that scholars had known

that the translations
were all based

on rather shaky
evidence, shaky texts.

So this is what drove Von
Tischendorf to go and search

across the ancient
Scriptorius, they were called.

DR. SCOT MCKENDRICK: When the
manuscript was first discovered

in 1844, this met exactly what
Tischendorf was looking for.

In other words, a very early
manuscript of the Christian

Bible.

And in particular, of course,
what he subsequently found

was the earliest
complete New Testament.

NARRATOR: But is Codex
Sinaiticus really

the earliest copy of
the New Testament?

Or is it a 19th
century work created

by Constantine Simonides?

A work that was somehow
tampered with and manipulated

to fulfill a
centuries old agenda?

After presenting many
names, dates, and places

to the scholars
of Western Europe,

Simonides himself seemed to
grow weary of the debates.

At one point he wrote "What
then have you to oppose

to the evidence of
living men, O zealous

defender of the
pseudo-Sinaitic Codex?

If you are still
incredulous, I say to you,

remain faithful in
your faithlessness.

I have proclaimed the truth,
for I will answer as I should

to the All-Seeing God
in the day of judgment.

Therefore, I have
spoken, I have no sin.

Wholly yours,
Constantine Simonides."

Simonides would publish
a final work in 1864

before leaving England for good.

In it, he reaffirmed his
claims about Sinaiticus

and included the testimonies
of those who believed him.

Yet and his enemies
in the press continued

to insist that he was
merely a liar and a forger.

The charge of forgery was
never proven against Simonides,

but can be traced to his initial
conflict with Tischendorf

at the University
of Leipzig in 1855

when Simonides presented
the first known copy

of the Shepherd of
Hermas in Greek.

CHRISTIAN PINTO: The reason
the Shepherd of Hermas

is important is because
it's a work that

was embraced by
the early church.

But in Western Europe, it
was only known in Latin.

And yet scholars
knew that it had

originally been
written in Greek.

But nobody had ever
found a copy in Greek.

Constantine Simonides
was the first man

to bring a Greek copy of
the Shepherd of Hermas

into Western Europe.

And that's very important
because the Shepherd of Hermas

is also found as part
of Codex Sinaiticus.

And this supports
the idea that he

could have created
Codex Sinaiticus.

Why?

Because he had access to a Greek
copy of the Shepherd of Hermas.

And he's the only
person in the world who

had a copy of the Greek version
of the Shepherd of Hermas.

That's why it's so significant.

NARRATOR: While most of
the scholars at Leipzig

embraced the Hermas
manuscript as genuine,

Tischendorf declared it
to be a forgery because it

disagreed with
the Latin version.

In response, Simonides argued
that "the manuscript Herams was

correct and that common Latin
translations from which it

different had been
made not in accordance

with the Greek
originals but to suit

the views of the Latin
translators who had put

into the mouth of Hermas
doctrinal opinions

eminently calculated to
strengthen the position

of the Catholic Church to which
the translators belonged."

Simonides' biographer wrote that
"as some of the chief dogmas

of the Latin Church
were severely attacked

by an exposure of the fraud
in the Latin translations,

Simonides gained much
ill-will among the members

of that church."

-This cannot be right.

This is a forgery.

NARRATOR: The charge
of forgery would

be exaggerated in the
English press to the point

that Simonides would eventually
be accused of forging nearly

everything he came
in contact with.

He is said to have left
England about 1864.

But then in 1870,
a number of the men

who opposed him would become
involved in the new revision

committee for the
King James Bible.

The committee was led by Fenton
John Anthony Hort, the friend

of Tregelles who
was among the first

to embrace the Codex Sinaiticus.

Under his leadership,
the committee

would create a new Greek
text in fulfillment

of what Tischendorf
had written in 1866.

They used as their
foundation Codex

Vaticanus and the
Codex Sinaiticus.

-It was an entirely
new Greek text.

It was different from
anything that existed before.

NARRATOR: Hort seems
to have been motivated

by a hatred for the traditional
Greek of the Reformation.

He referred to it as villainous
and as "that vile Textus

Receptus."

His partner was an Anglican
bishop named BF Wescott.

Other committee members
included Tregelles,

along with FHA Scribener.

It is interesting to note that
the committee also invited John

Henry Newman, who was at
the time, a Catholic priest.

And while he declined the
offer, their invitation

reveals much about the
theological opinions

of Wescott and Hort.

DR. RONALD COOKE: You know,
there's definite links

to Roman Catholicism there
in the different Bibles.

Wescott and Hort, they were

definitely
Anglp-Catholics at best.

INTERVIEWER (OFFSCREEN):
So you would

call Wescott and
Hort Anglo-Catholics?

DR. RONALD COOKE:
Yeah, I would think

that you would have
to class them as that.

You have your whole
Tractarian movement

going on at that time
in the Anglican church.

And that was the Anglo-Catholic
movement by John Henry Newman,

who later became a cardinal
in the Roman Catholic Church.

But he was in the Anglican
church at that time and John

Keeble, and Stride, and
many of the other writers,

they were all working to make
Anglicanism Roman Catholic.

They wanted to
introduce many Roman

Catholic practices
into Angilcanism.

And about 200 Anglicans
converted to Roman Catholicism

at that time, and
thousands of members.

So neither are but 1,000
and Anglican ministers

ready to convert to Roman in
the year of our lord, 2011.

So the whole
Anglo-Catholic movement

has been going on in England.

And out of that, in
Wescott and Hort,

they really were in the
midst of all that furor

about introducing Roman Catholic
ideas into the Anglican church.

-Wescott and Hort
in their letters,

they're very pro-Catholic.

NARRATOR: At one point, Wescott
described seeing a Pietta

statue of the Catholic Mary
holding the dead body of Jesus.

He wrote "had I
been alone, I could

have knelt there for hours."

-And Hort said that there's
no difference between Jesus

worship and Mary worship
in it's causes and effects.

So there's a very strong
Catholic thing there,

as it was with the
American committee.

With Phillip Shaff.

He was very supportive
of Catholicism.

NARRATOR: Philip Shaff would
lead the committee that

would develop the American
standard version of the Bible

in 1901, based on
the same Greek text

created by Wescott and Hort.

Like Tischendorf, Shaff met
privately with Pope Gregory

the 16th and even admitted
to kissing his red slipper.

Shaff would become known as the
ecumenical profit who claimed

he was promoting the
germs of a new theology.

LES GARRETT: We know he was
hitting with all of that

because he was one of
the founders of the World

Parliament of Religion that had
their first meeting in 1893.

And the speakers at that were
from all sorts of religions.

They were from Buddhists,
Buddhism, Hinduism,

these were all the
speakers that spoke.

Shintoism, the bishop of
Japan spoke on Shintoism.

And the subjects that they
covered was quite amazing.

And so there was a
mixture of Islam,

there was a Muslim speaker, and
Christian Science, and New Age.

Annie Passat was
the opening speaker,

who was a co-author of the
magazine called Lucifer, which

was a part of the
society's publication.

So there was a real strong
root and connection there.

NARRATOR: During these
events , the Lord's Prayer

was retitled the
Universal Prayer.

Their motto was have
we not all one father?

Hath not one God created us?

If you read the historic
account of the Parliament

there's no question that
there was a very strong focus

on Christianity and the Bible.

But the idea was that
Christ was inclusive.

And so rather than
calling for all those

who worshiped idols to repent,
as Paul when he witnessed

to the Athenians, the
Parliament determined

that all the pagan
religions should be embraced

and intermingled
with Christianity.

Strangely, the subject
of Phillip Shaff's speech

was the reunion of Christendom.

In it, he said "There is a
unity of Christian scholarship

of all creeds.

This unity has been
strikingly illustrated

in the Anglo American revision
of the authorized version

of the scriptures"

Was Shaff somehow suggesting
that the revision committee

of 1870 was part of
a greater agenda?

It is worth considering that
when Wescott and Hort finished

their revision of
the King James Bible,

their new Greek text was openly
condemned by Dean John Bergen,

who published a critique
titled The Revision Revised.

In it he said "I frankly confess
that to me all this looks very

much indeed like what, in
the language of lawyers,

is called conspiracy."

-Do you believe that
the Jesuit's Counter

Reformation is going
on still today?

DR. RONALD COOKE: Oh yeah.

I believe that that's one of
the main efforts of the Church

of Rome to undo the work of
the Protestant Reformation.

I think the Jesuits, they
have been in the forefront

of the battle and
they were so evil

that the popes finally
disbanded them.

The first pope that was
going to do that was poisoned

and the second pope, he said
that they would probably

get him too, and he was also,
after he signed the bill

to suppress the order,
he suffered a long time

in agony from the
poison that he got.

But then they were reintroduced
again by the church

and so they're
still working today.

They've changed their
tactics I believe

to work in the
ecumenical movement.

In the 20th century, the
Vatican would take the concept

of ecumenical community
to a global level

through Vatican Council II,
which redefined the position

of Rome on all the
religions of the world.

But exactly what role will
the revision of the Bible

play in this new movement?

At the world parliament
in 1893, Philip Schaff

said, "Christ
promised us one flock

under one shepherd,
but not one fold.

The famous passage, John
10:16, has been mistranslated--

And the error has passed into
the King James's version.

Christ flock is one, but
there are many folds.

We must look therefore
to a much broader union."

In the scripture, Jesus said,
"I am the way, the truth,

and the life: no man cometh
unto the Father, but by me."

While the apostle
Peter declared,

"Neither is there
salvation in any other.

For there is none other
name under heaven given

among men whereby
we must be saved."

Meanwhile, the apostle
Paul warned the church

when he said, "If any man
preach any other gospel--

let him be accursed.

Yet, if men could believe that
the earliest New Testament

manuscripts were full of errors,
and that early Christians were

unsure of what to
believe, then it

could be possible that such
bold verses in the scripture

are not so decisive after all.

And hence, the door to many
religions could thus be opened.

Is this perhaps what
Rome desired all along?

Many examples might be given
for the influence of Rome

in modern times.

But among the more interesting
is an interview with Leo

Hindery, the managing partner
of Intermedia Partners.

His company took
possession of the largest

Christian publishing
house in the world,

Thomas Nelson Publishers.

In this interview,
Hindery was asked

about what drove him
to be successful.

-What gave you the ambition
to go from you know,

sort of blue collar jobs
to wanting to become I

guess a business man.

-Lots of demons,
lots of devils that

have already caused
me to want to succeed.

I was blessed with
some some intellect

that some intellectual curiosity
as well that just drove me.

I had a lot of my
early influences

came from the Jesuits.

I was Jesuit trained
in both the high school

level and the College.

And I always knew that I wanted
it to be something special.

I don't mean that
self-servingly,

but I didn't want to succeed
and be well thought of.

And I give a lot of the early,
early credit to the Jesuits.

NARRATOR: In 2011,
Intermedia Partners

sold possession of Thomas Nelson
to Rupert Murdoch, most famous

for his ownership of Fox News.

Murdoch is also a Knight
of the Pontifical Order

of Saint Gregory, knighted
by the pope for his service

to Rome.

Through Thomas Nelson,
Murdoch's company

now publishes the
new King James Bible.

And through Zondervan, he
publishes the NIV Bible

as well.

Interestingly, Mr. Murdoch
also owns HarperCollins that

publishes the Satanic Bible
for the Church of Satan.

But are these things just
strange coincidences,

or could there be
other powers at work?

We considered this interview
with the late Malachi Martin,

a former Jesuit priest, and
author of a best selling book

on the history of
the Jesuit order.

In this interview,
Martin reveals

what are said to be the
dark powers at work in Rome.

-"Father uh, I've got an
article here, entitled,

Two Eminent Churchmen Agree
uh-- that there actually is--

this is a shocker
to a lot of people.

Uh, there is-- There are
Satanic practices going on

at the Vatican--
could that be true?"

-"Yes.

Now when we say in the Vatican,
it's at a certain level,

and um there's no doubt about
it, that there have been

and still are practices
that are uh formally

uh venerating Lucifer,
the prince of this world."

NARRATOR: In the
scripture the destruction

of spiritual Babylon
is clearly foretold.

We read that, "Babylon
the Great is fallen,

is fallen, and has become
the habitation of devils,

and the hold of
every foul spirit,

and a cage of every
unclean and hateful bird.

And I heard another
voice from heaven saying,

'Come out of her my people
that ye be not partakers of her

sins, and that ye receive not of
her plagues.' For her sins have

reached on to
heaven, and God hath

remembered her inequities."

In the Gospel of Matthew,
Jesus told the parable

of a man who sowed
good seed in his field.

But while men
slept, an enemy came

and sowed tares among the wheat.

The tare is said to be a type
of weed, known as the darnel.

The darnel is sometimes
called false wheat,

because as it grows it
appears almost exactly

like the real wheat
surrounding it.

But as it nears the harvest,
the wheat terms golden brown

but the darnel turns black, and
its seeds are full of poison.

Jesus said, "He that soweth the
good seed is the son of man;

the field is the world.

The good seed are the
children of the kingdom.

But the tares are the
children of the wicked one.

The enemy that sowed
them is the devil."

With these things in mind, we
ask the question, when it comes

to the history of the Church and
the Bible, who are the tares,

and who are the wheat?

And for which of them,
has been preserved

the true and faithful
record of the word of God?