<TITLE>11. Par 83-90</TITLE>L-83 Now, when Christianity came to Rome--Rome, in the very city of Rome had four hundred pagan temples inside the seven-mile wall: four hundred pagan temples, and they were to gods and to goddesses: gods and goddesses, women and men--gods, four hundred different ones. Think of it: four hundred.
Now, that's what Paul found when he come to Rome. That's what Aquila and Priscilla had when they were sent away from Pentecost and established the church in Rome; that's what they came into: pagan worship of idols. There was around two million people in Rome, in metropolitan Rome; that is, the slaves, and the outside surburbans, and so forth, around two million people. But the walls around Rome was seven miles. And inside of that seven miles, right at the foot of the mountain, was four hundred pagan temples to pagan gods and goddesses.

L-85 Now, I'd like to speak here just a moment on something I've taken from the histories, and I've got one right here with me. The way they entered into worship. How did they come to worship? How did a pagan come to worship? The first thing he did was go to the temple and find the priest, the pagan priest. Then he would give him an offering of so much money, and then a sacrifice, an animal to appease the god that he was going to speak to.
And in sometimes in one temple, there'd be more than one different kind of god. There'd be gods, goddesses, and everything else, in one temple.
So the pagan priest... He would go to him and give him some money, and the pagan priest would give him back a candle, just a regular tallow candle. And then the worshipper taken this candle... After he had paid the priest, taken this candle, and goes over to that certain altar of this god that he wanted to talk to. And on this altar was fire where the sacrifice would be burned at the foot of the statue, the big bronze temple, or--or idol. And he took this temp--this candle, and lit it from the fire altar--the altar fire of the idol. He lit the candle and went down to the foot of the--the altar before the--the idol, and set this candle down. And then after he set the candle down...

L-88 I guess it's so the certain god amongst all the other gods would know just which one of the statues he was supposed to get into, you know, to come back and talk to him. Why the candle, I don't know. But he'd set the candle down, lit off the altar fires.
And then he would go back out in the floor of the tabernacle, and there he would prostrate himself on the floor. And there he would put all of his soul, all of his strength into his prayer, and pray to this great god of some sort, a make-belief, a mythical god, pray to this god to come down in this image and talk to him.

L-90 It said that one of the emperors could so prostrate himself before the image of Apollos that he could actually say that he heard voices coming from the temp--from the--from the idol, talking back to him: prostrating himself.
You'd say at this point, "Brother Branham, did he hear a voice?" I do not doubt but what he did, but it was the voice of a devil. There was no such a thing as Jupiter, a god, and all these other gods they had.
But they prostrated themselves. And they laid there and worshipped--worshipped this mysterious god that they knowed nothing about while his spirit was in the idol that they thought he looked like. They made a image to him, and that found favor with him.


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