The corruption of the church by pagan mystery religions and false religious system began very early some say even at the time with Pentecost in 31 A.D. In Paul's epistles, he says that "the mystery of iniquity DOTH ALREADY WORK" (II Thess. 2:7). Paul wrote this in 50 or 51 AD The plot to supplant the Truth had already begun. In the later epistles of Paul and in those of the other Apostles, we find it gaining considerable momentum. So were did these mystery religions come from and how did they find their way into the early church. Well we dont have to go far to find one of the perpetrators of these false beliefs that crept into the church.

The book of Acts was written by Luke about 62 AD some 31 years after the True Church began. Acts goes over events which affected the church and especially tells us about the beginnings of matters relating to Church history. Now read the incident recorded by Luke, of the first encounter of the Apostles with Simon the Magus:

Acts 8:5-28 King James Version (KJV)
5 Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them.
6 And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.
7 For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed.
8 And there was great joy in that city.
9 But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:
10 To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.
11 And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.
12 But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.
13 Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done.
14 Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John:
15 Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost:
16 (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)
17 Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.
18 And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money,
19 Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.
20 But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.
21 Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.
22 Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.
23 For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.
24 Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me.
25 And they, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.

The reason Luke describes the intentions of this man so thoroughly is the profound effect this man, and his followers, had on Gods Church. Actually, this man by 62 AD, (when Luke composed the book of Acts) had caused the so much trouble and confusion that Luke had to show the people that he was not, as he claimed to be, a part of the Christian Church.

All scholars realize that Luke tells about Simon Magus beginning because of his later notoriety and danger to the Church.

In this regard, notice the comment of Hasting's Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, Vol. 2, p. 496: "It seems beyond question that Luke knew the reputation which Simon acquired, and that he regarded the subsequent history of Simon as the natural result of what occurred in the beginning of his connection with the Christians."

If we assume that Luke recorded this encounter of the Apostles with Simon Magus simply to show that "simony" was wrong, we miss the point completely. There is a score of places in other parts of the Bible to show the error of buying ecclesiastical gifts. Lets take a look closer look at Simon the Sorcerer or Magician, in Latin Simon Magnus. He was a Samaritan magus or follower of Zoroaster, magi who claimed the ability to read the stars, and manipulate the fate that the stars foretold and a convert to Christianity.

Notice the points Luke gives us. Simon was a Samaritan, and used unknown powers to do miracles and wonders (Verse 9) "which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one".

The whole population of Samaria gave heed to him (Verse 10) "To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God."

He was looked on as the greatest prophet in Samaria. The Samaritans saw him as "the Great One" -- a god. Luke is also careful to inform us that Simon had become firmly established in Samaria as "the Great One" and had practiced his powers " for a long time" (Verse 11) " And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries"..

Luke wants us to understand that he nominally became a Christian ("Simon himself believed") and was baptized -- that is, he physically, outwardly "entered" the Christian Church (Verse 13).

Simon even recognized that Christ's power was greater than his but wanted to be associated with that great name (Verse 13).

Simon, seeing the potential of the Christian religion waited until the authorities, Peter and John, came to Samaria and then offered to pay them money to get the power the apostles had.(Verses 18-21).

It appears that after being cast out by the Apostles he came to Rome where he became influential and well known. He was a danger and if you read between the lines, Luke was clearly showing that Simon was not truly converted or a part of God's Church, even though in Rome, many people were being fooled that Simon was truly a Christian. Instead he begun a false religion which history says formed into Gnosticism, which was from ancient religious ideas which spread in the first century among Jewish and early Christian groups.. Next lets take a look at what it did to destroy the truth and faith among the early believers.

So here is a good explanation, "...Simon Magus, after his rejection by Peter, began to fashion his own "Christian" church -- a church of which HE was head -- a church designed to completely overthrow the True Church of God. His idea was to blend together Babylonian teaching with some of the teachings of Christ -- especially to take the name of Christ -- and thus create ONE UNIVERSAL CHURCH! But a church with Babylonianism as its basis.

Harnack, a church historian, states that Simon Magus "proclaimed a doctrine in which the Jewish faith was strangely and grotesquely mixed with BABYLONIAN myths, together with some Greek additions. The mysterious worship . . . in consequence of the widened horizon and the deepening religious feeling, finally the wild SYNCRETISM [that is, blending together of religious beliefs], whose aim WAS A UNIVERSAL RELIGION, all contributed to gain adherents for Simon" (Vol. 1, p. 244).

Simon can be classified among the major group of so-called Christians (and Simon called himself such), called by Harnack the: "decidedly anti-Jewish groups . . . . They advanced much further in the criticism of the Old Testament and perceived the impossibility of saving it [that is, the Old Testament] for the Christian UNIVERSAL RELIGION. They rather connected this [universal] religion with the cultus-wisdom of BABYLON and SYRIA" (VoI. 1, p. 246).
With this background, we can understand why Peter so strongly rebuked Simon for his Babylonian ideas. Peter prophesied that this was the man who was to be the "gall of bitterness, and bond of iniquity" to the True Church. Simon’ s attitude was corrupt in the extreme!

The Bible shows he had been working through demons. And yet, he finally called himself a "Christian." Dr. McGiffert, speaking of Simon Magus, says: "His effort to rival and surpass Jesus very likely began after his contact with the Christians that Luke records. His religious system was apparently a SYNCRETISM of Jewish and Oriental elements" (Hasting’s Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, Vol. 2, p. 497)....."

While the church at Rome was allowing ancient religious ideas and paganism to creep into its teachings, the church in Alexandria was being corrupted by Greek philosophy and constructing doctrines influenced by Plato and the Stoics:

It is seen in the writings of Clement of Alexandria head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria. He united Greek philosophical traditions with Christian doctrine. He used the term "gnostic" for Christians who had attained the deeper teaching of the Logos which he felt was a lesser form of God, he taught that Christ was not really flesh but spirit. He developed a Christian Platonism, of which objects in the everyday world are imperfect copies. He presented the goal of Christian life as deification, or assimilation into God.

He arose from Alexandria's Catechetical School and was well versed in pagan literature which it seems he used to develop his doctrines. Clement is best remembered as the teacher of Origen who followed him as head of Alexandria's Catechetical School and interpreted scripture allegorically and showed himself to be a Neo-Pythagorean, and Neo-Platonist. Like Plotinus, he wrote that the soul passes through successive stages of incarnation before eventually reaching God. He imagined even demons being reunited with God. For Origen like his teacher Clement, God was the First Principle, and Christ, the Logos, was subordinate to him. He did not believe in the ressurection and taught against that the soul died along with the body, being restored to life only at the resurrection (see soul sleep).

His works were used in the formulation of the early churches doctrines, Origen wrote about 6,000 works. A list was given by Eusebius who studied them and seems to have continued some of the false beliefs which he passed on in his writings. He followed Origen later as bishop of Caesarea and spread his ideas as seen in the further development of the Arian controversies. For instance he was involved in the dispute with Eustathius of Antioch who opposed the growing influence of Origen, including his practice of an allegorical exegesis of scripture. Eustathius perceived in Origen's theology the roots of Arianism and fought against it. He was correct facts were to show, as Eusebius was intent upon emphasizing the difference of the persona of the Trinity and maintaining the subordination of the Son (Logos, or Word) to God. The Son (Jesus), as Arianism asserted, is a creature of God. This Logos, as a derivative creature and not truly God as the Father is truly God, could therefore change (Eusebius, with most early theologians, assumed God was immutable), and he assumed a human body without altering the immutable divine Father. The relation of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity Eusebius explained similarly to that of the Son to the Father. No point of this doctrine is original with Eusebius, all is traceable to his teacher Origen.

So we see where the twisting of the nature Christ begins, and the sources that it came from. It was to confuse and mislead many which we see even to this day......

So lets look close as what Simon Magus formed, as the Gnostics was basically a mixture of Greek Philopsophy and Ancient Mystery religion, Zoroastrianism which was from Simon's magi background, and came to be known as Gnosticism. This Gnostic line of thought had certain characteristics which had serious moral and ethical consequences. Its basic belief was that matter was essentially evil and spirit alone was good. If as they thought, matter is evil, the body is evil; and the body must be despised and held down and we see where rigid asceticism came from. So following this line, if the body is evil, it does not matter what a man does with it. Therefore, man could sate his appetites and man could use his body in the most licentious way and it makes no difference. A common characteristic was the teaching that the realization of gnosis or the esoteric or intuitive knowledge, is the way to salvation of the soul from the material world. They mixed truth with falsehoods and Jesus is identified by some Gnostic sects as an embodiment of the supreme being who became incarnate to bring gnosis to the earth and the Gnostic sects develop the belief that Jesus was merely a human who attained divinity through gnosis and taught his disciples to do the same.

Gnosticism tried to blend the new religion but ultimately was against traditional Christian beliefs and attempted to combine Paganism with Christianity. Some Gnostic groups had beliefs that often contradicted the beliefs of other Gnostic groups. The movement spread in areas controlled by the Roman Empire and especially strong in Egypt, but the one thing that they all had in common was that all of these groups departed from the truth, and the Gnostic mixed their beliefs into the manuscripts they made of the scriptures, putting changes of their particular beliefs or taking out what disagreed with it.

The movement spread in areas controlled by the Roman Empire and especially in Rome and Egypt, and here is where it gets interesting. From Egypt we get some of their ideas and beliefs that were put into corrupted manuscripts and years later two of these manuscripts appeared. These were called Vaticanus & Sinaiticus since they were somehow 'found' in the Vatican Library & a monastery in the Sinai respectively. Neither was in the original Greek language, but in a Coptic translation, an early Egyptian language. Coptic placed the origin of these two texts in the region of Alexandria, Egypt the center of the gnosticism heresy. Hence they became known collectively as the Alexandrian Codices.

And now it becomes even more interesting, as Anglicans Westcott & Hort undertook the translation of these Coptic copies back into their original Greek language and the differences began to suddenly appear. Gone was the resurrection story in the book of Mark (the last twelve verses of the KJV). Gone was Acts 8:37 where the Ethiopian eunuch confesses Jesus as the Son of God along with many other passages. All the modern translations which were written during this time frame are based on the Westcott & Hort Coptic Greek text including the American Standard Version (ASV), the New International Version (NIV), the New World Translation (NWT) & even the New KJV (NKJV) picked up from the Gnostic corrupted manuscripts.... and now we know the rest of the story as they say...