The Imperial Passageway for the Emperor Domitian.
This fine, architecturally great passageway was built expressly for Domitian (who ruled the Roman Empire from A.D. 81-96) to have an easy way for him to walk to work. It connected his palace with his ‘office’. This structure was first class, with expert and beautiful brickwork that stands to this day.
We saw it with our own eyes when we visited the Roman Forum last November. It didn’t register with me too much at the time because there were so many other ruins to observe.
However, I recently saw this picture and it moved me to further thinking about this figure from church history.
The emperor Domitian was the first Roman emperor to inflict an empire-wide persecution on the Christian church. This happened around the year A.D. 90.
He was not the first emperor to persecute Christians. Before him, Nero, in A.D. 64, went on a wild rampage killing Christians and impaling them on stakes, then lighting them on fire. But Nero’s persecution, horrible as it was, was confined to the city of Rome and short-lived.
Domitian’s persecution was not the result of insane rage, but of settled policy. It also went beyond Rome; it was empire wide. He decided that Christians were a problem because they didn’t worship the Roman gods. He called them “atheists.” And so, if they refused to worship the gods, they were punished and maybe killed. One could say that his persecution was, at root, a push for unity–as in “Let’s get everyone on the same page, get everyone worshipping the gods, and the empire will be a better place.”
His decision was something like a bureaucratic policy. But those are the worst kind. As C.S. Lewis brilliantly said, “…it [the greatest evil] is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices,” (from the preface of The Screwtape Letters). Domitian’s policy set the course for 225 years of Roman persecution that would follow.
The book of Revelation was written at this time. Domitian may have been a pattern for the figure of the beast, also known as antichrist (Revelation 13).
Revelation was given as a vision of Jesus Christ to the Apostle John (Revelation 1:1). But this does not mean that the vision could not have been shaped by current events. I believe that God used the present circumstances of the day to inform the vision that was given to John.
The Christians of that day were living in the events of Revelation, at least an initial version of it. And persecuted Christians ever since those days are also living in their own versions of it.
The Emperor Domitian, while not the antichrist, was a preview of that future figure. 1 John 2:18 says, “Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come.” So, there are little ones leading up to the big ultimate one, who is yet to come.
Rather than try to guess who the antichrist is or if he is alive today, it would be better to recognize the setting in which he will arise, which will be under the pretense of creating world unity–of getting everyone on the same page and punishing those who resist.
There’s a saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” These days there are constant calls for globalization in order to fix a crisis (climate, financial, etc.). It’s as if you can’t have progress unless it’s “global.” And all of this, without exception that I can tell, is suspiciously devoid of Christianity.
I think of Davos, the World Economic Council, where elites fly in on their private jets to discuss ways to achieve globalism under their ‘wise and educated’ guidance. Do I think the World Economic Council will produce the antichrist? No. It’s too pathetic and ridiculous.
But I do think the antichrist will come under the banner of promoting world unity. So maybe Davos is a little bit of a preview.
Now, back to Domitian’s passageway. Ian Fleming, who wrote an article about it, said that it, “served as the grand entrance through which the Emperor Domitian accessed his residence, symbolizing his power and exclusivity.”
I couldn’t help but compare this emperor’s “power and exclusivity” with the lives of the Christians he killed. Those Christians didn’t have passageways built for them to get to their jobs. They might have lost what jobs they had. They might have been in poverty, wondering if they or a family member were going to get caught by the Roman soldiers enforcing the unity policy.
I also wonder about the ‘passageway’ Domitian faced when he died. He was going somewhere. It’s not for me to judge, but there is no evidence that he repented of his sin and turned to Christ. If he died in his sin, with so much evil on his record that he was a pattern for the antichrist, his passageway would not at all be like the fancy one he walked through when he was emperor. It would be something quite the opposite.
In Luke 16, Jesus tells a story in which He paints a gripping picture of the afterlife. There, Abraham speaks to an evil rich man who was in hades (which may have been a picture of hell). But Lazarus, a poor but believing beggar, went to heaven. Abraham said to the rich man, “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony,” (Luke 16:25).
Persecutions come and go. If we are persecuted, it will be worth it to be found faithful. As the psalmist said, “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked,” (Psalm 84:10).