The Angel said that Mary would have a male child, and he should call him Jesus. After the birth of Jesus, there was a great light in the sky seen in the east. The Magi saw it as a sign that the King of the Jews had been born. These Magi followed this light to a town of Bethlehem and started to search for this King. They had asked chief priests of Herod where to find him so they could worship him. When King Herod found about it he begin to worry about his throne, and became furious. He decreed an order that all male children younger than two years old to be killed.
Once again, angels ppeared to joseph in a dream and said go to Egypt away from Herod’s rule. After Herod died, they VUOUld be able to return. Jesus the prophet: At the age of twelve, Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover with his family. When it was over, they packed up and left. After a days journey Jesus’s parents notice, he was not there with them. Worried they returned to Jerusalem. After three days, they found him sitting in the temple with the teachers where he had been listing to them and asking them questions.
Everyone there who was listening to him had been astounded by his understanding and answers to the questions. When asked by his parents why he stayed there his answer was “why were you searching for me. ” “Didn’t you know I had to be in my father’s house”? During Jesus’s ministry, he helped many people through curing and healing their bodies or spiritual being. Jesus performed many miracles throughout his life, one in particular that impressed me was the death of Lazarus. Mary and her sister Martha sent for Jesus because her brother Lazarus was very sick and they wanted Jesus to heal him.
When Jesus finally arrived there, Lazarus was dead four days. Mind you, the human body begins to decay almost immediately after death. Martha said to Jesus if only you could have arrived sooner my brother would not have died. Jesus said to her, “your brother will rise again” Martha told Jesus that he would at the end of days. Jesus said to her “l am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never did’ Jesus called into the tomb Lazarus come out and Lazarus came out wrapped in linen.
There were many people there to see this take place and the word spread rapidly. The Apostles: The Apostles were the students Of Jesus he told them that they would carry n Christianity to others. There were twelve Apostles in all until the death of Jesus because Judas had hung himself for betraying Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. After this, there were only eleven Apostles. After a short period, they named Matthias to make twelve and they spread the gospel to other nations. Matthew, Luke, Mark, John, James, Peter, and Paul write most of the New Testament.
At this of time the early Christian literature is so fragmentary there is not much certainty in the lives of the Apostles. What influenced the spread of Christianity? Certainly not one or two people, but thousands of eople have instrumental in spreading the gospel of Christ. In fact there have been many that have given their lives for not having renounce Jesus. The word Christianity followers of Christ, it does not mean with denominations or doctrines. God gives anyone his or her choice to accept Jesus Christ. The word Christ is a title that comes from the Greek language khristos meaning the anointed one.
Jesus was the promised Messiah (Isaiah 7:14) to come from God in the flesh for the atonement of our sins. More than anything Christianity has spread, because of the need of humanity to love and worship God, or make one up as we have seen in our book Civilizations of the West. However, since God gave us his only son Jesus to answer that need and demonstrate His loving forgiveness (John 3:16-17) Through God, humanity is drawn to seek Him out to fulfill the void and feed the hunger of our needs for atonement and restoration.
On the third day after the death of Jesus, he arose from the dead and appeared to his disciples several times to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament. Armed with all the miracles and testaments of Jesus, Paul began to spread the word moving from town to town across Asia Minor through Greece and finally landing in Roam. Throughout his travels, he created churches. Wherever Paul or the others disciples went they worked miracles curing people casting out demons and preaching. As Paul traveled, he would write letters to the churches he had established along his way.
Later these would become some of the letters in the bible. When Christianity came to Rome for the first three centuries, the Christian church endured sporadic persecution at the hands of Roman authorities. This experience, and its resulting martyrs and justifiers, would have significant istorical and theological consequences for the developing faith. Among other things, persecution triggered the cult of the saints, helped the rapid growth and spread of Christianity, prompted defenses, and explanations of Christianity and, in its aftermath, raised fundamental questions about the nature Of the church.
The Roman Empire was generally quite tolerant in its treatment of other religions. The imperial policy was generally one of incorporation of the local gods of a newly conquered area were simply added to the Roman pantheon, and often given Roman names. Even the Jews, with heir one god, were generally tolerated. So we ask ourselves why were there persecution of Christians? In order to understand the Roman distrust of Christianity, you have to understand the Roman view of religion. For the Romans, religion was first a social activity that promoted unity and loyalty to the state – a religious attitude the Romans called pietas, or piety.
Cicero wrote that if piety in the Roman sense were to disappear, social unity and justice would perish along with it. The early Roman writers viewed Christianity not as another kind of piety, but as a, superstition. Pliny, (The younger) a Roman overnor writing circa 1 10 AD, called Christianity a “superstition taken to extravagant lengths. Similarly, the Roman historian Tacitus called it a deadly superstition,” and the historian Suetonius called Christians “a class of persons given to a new and mischievous superstition.
In this context, the word “superstition” has a slightly different connotation than it has today: for the Romans, it designated something foreign and different – in a negative sense. Religious beliefs were valid only as far as it could be shown to be old and in line with ancient customs; new and innovative teachings were regarded with istrust. The Roman authorities hesitated for a long time over how to deal with this new cult. They largely appreciated this new religion as subversive and potentially dangerous.
For Christianity with its insistence on only one god sometimes seemed to threaten the principle of religious toleration, which had guaranteed (religious) peace for so long among the people of the empire. Most of all Christianity clashed with the official state religion of the empire, for Christians refused to perform Caesar worship. This, in the Roman mindset, demonstrated their disloyalty to their rulers. Persecution of the Christians began with Nero’s bloody repression of AD 64. This was only a rash and sporadic repression though it is perhaps the one, which remains the most infamous of them all.
The Church has traditionally spoken of ten primitive persecutions of Christianity; commencing with that of Nero in 64 CE. In 64 A. D. , the Roman Emperor Nero attempted to exterminate all people who professed faith in the newfound Christian religion. Many factors played a major part in promoting this Empire wide genocide. First, a great fire broke out that destroyed the city of Rome. The cause of this fire is unknown; owever, for the Romans it was easy to blame the Christians, whom the Romans considered complete and utter miscreants. The second major factor was Nero himself. Nero was insane.
The Emperor of Rome took pleasure in other people’s pain; he delighted in the idea of wiping the Christians from the face of the Earth. Nero performed the worst atrocities upon his victims; he did not just kill Christians, he wanted to make them suffer first. Nero enjoyed dipping the Christians in wax, and impaling them on poles around his palace, he would then light them on fire, and yell: “Now you truly are the light of the world. Nero also performed many other kinds of torture, often killing them in the Circus Maximus in front of large crowds of spectators where he did some of his most gruesome murders.
Here he would wrap Christians up in animal skins and throw them to lions, or dogs who would then tear these men and women apart in front of thousands of entertained spectators. At other times, he would crucify them, and after the crowd would get bored, he would set the Christians on fire. We have no idea how many Christians lost their lives under the Nero’s persecution, but Historians tell us that Nero’s persecution lasted several ears, and was not confined to Rome but was practiced throughout the Empire, and cost the lives of a very large number of Christians.
We know that policy of persecution that Nero used, would be practiced by many other Emperors such as: Domitian, Valerian, and Dioclesian; who established the great persecutions that would see thousand if not millions go through the worst kinds of tortures. One very interesting thing is that those Christians who were Roman Citizens did not face the same terrible death as Christians who were not. The Roman Government, by law, could not torture Roman citizens.
The Apostle Paul, the most well-known of the Christian evangelists, had to be beheaded because he was a citizen, and was therefore saved from much of the pain and torture, inflicted on the others. In spite of Nero’s brutality, his efforts to exterminate the Christians backlashed. Many people came to Christianity during and after Nero’s reign for several of reasons: Nero brought Christianity into the spotlight, and people started hearing about it; before this time, Christianity was a small sect, nothing more than a nuisance to the people.
Many people died under Nero’s persecution because they laimed that they had seen Christ resurrected from the dead. In the Bible, it tells us that 500 people had supposedly seen Christ after he resurrected from the dead. Although, we do not know much about these men individually, but we do know that there were twelve men who are called Jesus (The Apostles) who also claimed to have seen the resurrection. Of these twelve, eleven of them were put to death, simply because they would not recant that they had seen Christ resurrected from the dead.
Of these twelve, at least one is very well documented, Peter was crucified in Rome by Nero; also Paul, who had laimed to see Christ later than the twelve, was beheaded by Nero. Many Romans could not believe that these men would die for a lie, so they began to accept Christian doctrine. Jesus is arguably the most influential person who ever lived. He is the creator of Christianity, the largest civilization of today. Christian influences during the middle ages and the following years would have a profound effect on intellectual thought across Europe.
The first universities in history were established by various religious orders, the most important, and influential of these being the Jesuits. This group of monks led the way for technological development in Europe as well as scientific endeavor’s. under Christianity, philosophy and theology flourished, producing some of the greatest philosophers and writers in history. Aristotelian logic became reintroduced, explored and expanded, in addition to the popularization of Roman and Greek thinkers and literature. Christianity’s influence widened when the great Charlemagne became king of the Franks.
