Question about Reformation and a divided church

[JohnD]

Roman Catholicism (in the person of Emperor Constantine) hijacked Christianity through peace. He may have been on of the four horsemen in Revelation.

Hitler may have been another. 

World Wars I and II may have been prophesied in Revelation...

...we (mere mortal people) interpret things to happen in a small period of time...

this was the mistake made by those who believed Christ would return in the First Century CE.

As for any division in the body Christian... just depends on letting the Author of the Bible (the Holy Spirit) interpret the Bible... or men...

[Willa]

In the Roman Church the service was in Latin and the Bible was read in Latin.  The Pope was a political figure to whom all the princes of Europe swore allegiance.   So when the Roman church refused to repent of glaring sin, such as the sale of indulgences to buy your loved ones out of purgatory, praying to saints and many other abuses, protestants were left no alternative but to withdraw.  But this meant to either be put to death or to bring princes in as allies and make a political split as well.  This caused a long war, but it saw the break up of the Holy Roman Empire.  So language separated the various denominations.  Bibles were printed in their own languages as well,  allowing more people to read it and also promoting literacy.  But politics also separated them.  The major church movements that emerged were Lutheran, often called evangelicals because they believed that Christ died for all and all may be saved, Reformed that believed Christ died only for the elect and the rest were predestined to hell, the Aranians who believed a modified version of Calvinistic Reformed, and the Anabaptists who believed in immersion, but had many sects among them--some which took a stand on visions and experiences.  The Swiss Anabaptists were ostracized by all the others and had to disperse in Germany and and France, but they left and influence.  

The greatest influence of the Reformation was to establish salvation by faith in Christ and by faith in the Holy Scriptures.  The second was to bring the Bible to the people in their own languages. No longer was it faith in the pope and faith in the Roman church, and faith in Mary and the saints, as well as faith in whatever their priest told them.  They could read for themselves what God had said and can now come into direct relationship with God by faith in the completed work of the Cross, not by works prescribed by a priest.  

Not all of the rituals and beliefs of the Roman Church were discarded, what they did discard was traumatic enough to adjust to.  But those which had the most glaring discord with the Bible were discarded.  The English church, however, broke along the lines of Luther's Augsburg confession, but the purposes was that the king Henry 8 could divorce and marry yet another wife.  The archbishop was under the thumb of the king , and even certain Bible verses that he found offensive were modified to his liking.  But the church tetered according to the beliefs of the various monarchs, back to Catholicism and sometimes toward reformed doctrine.  The ritual remained much the same and is what holds the English church together regardless of the Bible.  This gave rise to various other denominations that brought belief and practice closer to the early church, discarding rituals to various degrees.  

In the US and elsewhere churches were often divided by language of the immigrants as well as church government and practice.  But in the ecumenical movement it is the Bible and the original doctrines that have been discarded instead of the non essentials, and they have thrown the Baby Jesus out with the bath water.