Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Matthew 7:13-14
The Romans had constructed a vast network of roads for troop movements in order to secure subdued territories. Smaller roads fed into larger roads which all led to the capital. These main roads were easy to travel, being broad and paved with stone. Maps were hardly necessary for navigation, as signs and mile markers dotted the way. If there was any doubt, those highways were thronged with people who could be hailed for directions. As it is today, street merchants likely stood on corners with snacks and trinkets to sell to passing travellers. State-run hotels lined the roads and alehouses abounded for the lewd traveller. Rome’s gates were imposingly tall and could be seen from afar. They were also very wide in order to accommodate the promiscuous cartloads of men, beasts, and goods that flowed through them each day. The centre of Ancient Rome both geographically and culturally was Capitoline Hill. Clivus Capitolinus or ‘Capitoline Ascension’ was the road that led through the primary precinct. Clivus Capitolinus terminated at the Temple of Jupiter, the chief god of Rome.
Within the ancient imperial dominion across Europe and the East, it truly could be said that ‘all roads lead to Rome’. How much more may it be said of Rome’s spiritual dominion, which today encompasses the whole earth?
For example, visiting a ‘Protestant’ church will almost always require attendance upon Rome’s sanctified ‘day of the sun’. While a mainstream SDA church may open their doors to you on Saturday, you will nevertheless be met there by Rome’s three-headed sun god. Those who don’t attend church, preferring ‘science’ over religion, wonder with great admiration at Rome’s heliocentric and big bang theories. Having forsaken the moral law of God, their moral burden may be offloaded by heeding Rome’s climate change agenda, which is calling them to rest upon Sunday to save the ‘planet’.
Indeed, the convenient journey into Imperial Rome, marked by her excellent roads and signposts, is much like the spiritual path one treads when, guided by Rome’s belief systems, they follow the ‘broad…way, that leadeth to destruction’.
Unlike the wide, paved, and signed roads that led to Rome, ‘narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life’ (Matthew 7:14). This path is steep, rugged, and unsigned to the naked eye. Because every man must ‘work out [his] own salvation with fear and trembling’ (Philippians 2:12), the way must be travelled in single file, being too narrow for more than one person at a time. Independent thought and diligent research is required to find the narrow path, as all Rome-bound travellers will give you wrong directions. Since it is less-travelled, the road to life becomes difficult to distinguish. Roman road builders are constantly paving shiny new roads that branch off the narrow way, all of them leading to Rome. Upon close examination, these are either called ‘saved by your own works’ or ‘saved in sin’. For this reason, the wayfarer must refer constantly to his issued map, or else, he will end up in Rome.
The broad gate leading to destruction is so wide that one may enter it ‘laden with sins..and diverse lusts’ (2 Timothy 3:6). But the gate that leads to life is so narrow that it requires the ‘lay[ing] aside [of] every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us’ (Hebrews 12:1).
It is commonly said that life is not about the destination, but about the journey. While this is not the perspective of the Christian, it is his journey that fits him for his destination. Moseying through Rome’s gate ends up in shameful prostration before Jupiter, ‘the god of this world’ and finally, ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’. By contrast, the exceeding joy that awaits the traveller of the narrow way will so greatly eclipse the hardships of his journey that ‘the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind’ (Isaiah 65:17).
Christopher Sparks