The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre goes by this name because Constantine the Great decided that god was buried and rose from the dead here. 6 religious group believe this today also, the Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Copts, Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopeans and the Catholics.

Constantine became familiar with this place, known as Golgotha, the place of the skull, when he visited here, round about 304 of the Christian Era, with his learned Christian advisor Eusebius.

Not many people would come to see the place where some unknown person, however pious was crucified. There is only on place on earth that was visited by millions of people from all walks of life from every corner of the Roman World, namely the destroyed temple of the Jews.

Every Jew dreams of one day visiting the ruins of the temple and praying for it's rebuilding. If anyone doubts this he only needs to visit the Wailing Wall today. This is even the highlight of a visit to Israel of every non Jew.

Like everybody else Constantine had also heard of a place in Jerusalem, known then as Aelia Capitolina, where great numbers of people from all over the roman empire visited. The whole Roman World was abuzz with rumors of the ruins of God's holy place on earth that millions were visiting. The thing that amazed him more than anything else is that there wasn't even a temple standing there, just the ruins of a temple.

While attendance at the magnificent Roman Temples throughout the world was dwindling the numbers of people visiting a ruin in Jerusalem was growing and the Jews were full of optimism that the temple would be rebuilt and the messiah would come.

All the Roman emperors for many years before Constantine were bothered by disunity in the empire. It was being aggravated by the persecution of many Roman citizens who stubbornly refused to acknowledge the emperor as god. Their belief in one supreme god as ruler of the world caused disunity in the empire who should all be united under the same belief that the emperor was god.

The Roman Empire was disunited. Many citizens had turned to Christianity and even being thrown to the lions couldn't make them worship the emperor as a god. In fact the more Christians were persecuted the more their numbers grew.

Even the Jews, a miserable, impoverished, defeated people in the eyes of Romans, were more united than the Romans. They gathered in their hundreds of thousands like one man round nothing but ruins and they all prayed together three times a day, in their united communities as if they were one united nation who had never been conquered by Rome.

Rome needed that kind of unity. Constantine created it at Calvary by declaring that as the place where god was reborn after dying a terrible death on the cross.

Jews visit the ruins of the temple because it's where god once lived on earth and they pray for the resurrection of his temple. Christians visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre because it's also the site of the ruins of god's temple who is Jesus and even more so it's the site where god's temple (Jesus) was resurrected and became god.

By building the Church of the resurrection Constantine like god had a place that millions would visit and worship the one he had appointed as god, Jesus.

By building a shrine to a god who had risen from the dead he became respected as the main representative of that god on earth. Being the one who had elevated Jesus to the level of a god he virtually became greater than god and didn't demand that Christians worship him as a god the way his predecessors had done and had only brought about disunity.

By building the church and glorifying the cross he and Jesus became equal. In any case the cross looked similar to the symbol on his royal banner. When his myriads of soldiers marched to quell any rebelliousness in the empire they marched behind his banner which also became the banner of Jesus.

Without Constantine Jesus would have remained simply another, unknown, suffering Jew. Without Jesus Constantine would have been just another one of the many unknown Roman emperors.

All the millions of visitors to the shrine where god had died and been buried and had risen from the dead attest daily to his greatness which is at least equal to greatness of Jesus and much greater than the recognition  demanded by his predecessors.