Christians left Africa and the middle east because of the Romans who were violently repressing Judaism at the time but one of the largest Christian populations in the world is in Ethiopia.

Ironically, the christian retreat from the middle east into what was then the civilized part of the world (Rome) and the spread of the religion as it formed led to the persecution of Christians by Romans. Some Christians then escaped Roman rule and spread up into Europe. The ones that stayed behind ended the persecution by integrating into Roman society, destroying the gov't (which by then was so corrupt and top heavy it was dying anyway) and becoming what we today call the Roman Catholic Church. The Church adopted many of the mysticism(s) and pagan magics of ancient Rome (the pantheon of saints to represent the pantheon of gods, for example) into itself to make their control more easily accepted. When the Catholic Church came to power, they found that they had a ready and waiting population of primitive Christians to exploit and so started the Dark Ages, which was primarily the Church fighting for dominance over pure Christianity. Many pure Christians were burned or tortured as witches, but that is often overlooked except where it applies to the Templars.

Martin Luther was the first Christian to break the hold of the Church. Luther rejected the corruption of Christianity by the addition of the 'pantheon' of saints and started a restructured church of basic Christ followers.

another interesting correlation to the formation of the Roman Catholic Church and the destruction of the Roman Republic is between the current role of Catholic priests assisting the communists in the destruction of Constitutional government in America. The Roman Church is very good at these kind of over throws and their involvement, even in such seemingly minor ways, is very alarming to me.

Dawn