Significantly, with the elimination of Yahweh’s Name, the church entered into a state of spiritual decline that has continued to this day. In the fourth century, the Roman emperor Constantine made himself the de facto head of the Christian church, a situation that he used for the political objective of stabilizing his empire. This further hastened the spiritual decline of the church; and not long after that, the Pope of Christendom was functioning like a Roman emperor. The church was steadily being absorbed by the world.