The Real Catholic Church

Alrighty folks... this blog post is set up as teaching notes. I am going to be talking about the Catholic Church. As you will read below this does not mean the Catholic religion but the Universal church. This era occurred from 70-312 AD.

Enjoy!

Introduction:

• The age of catholic Christianity fascinated me because of how efficient and how effective the spread of the Gospel was. In a time where you could only travel as fast as your camel would move, it is amazing how far it spread in such a short time.
• It is important to note that the term catholic does not refer to the Catholic religion but the root word “universal”.
• At this time there were not denominations but instead one belief about Christ. There were no major disputes at this time.

The Flame of Evangelism

• By the 300’s, evidence shows there were over 30,000 Christians in Rome.
• The Gospel left Jerusalem mainly because of the amount of persecution that was occurring there.
• Apostles were flogged and thrown in prison
• Stephen became the first martyr by preaching about how God did not only reside in the Jewish temple. This made the Jews so angry they stoned him.
• In Acts 10, we see that Antioch became the first town with a multi cultural church.
• Antioch was also the launch point for many missions done by Paul.

There were six main reasons for the explosion of the Gospel during this period.

1. Believers were so excited about what happened, they could not stop talking about it.

            *This convicted me because I should have that same level of excitement             about sharing Christ. They literally could not be quiet about it and I have             to force myself sometimes to talk about Him.

            *Mark 16:15 says, “He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the             gospel to all creation.” – my mindset should be to tell EVERYBODY             about Christ. That could be by words or by works.

2. When people heard the Gospel, it completely transformed them.

            *This is where we see 2^nd Corinthians 5:17 really be lived out, “Therefore,             if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the             new is here!”

3. This was the first time that our God was openly available to anybody. This included men, women, children, Jew, and gentile.

            *This is another pivotal moment in the church. Without Peter’s vision in             Acts 10, the rest of the world would not have been told the Good News,             which includes me!

4. There was a lot going on politically which was leading to a crumbling nation. People were not able to take care of themselves. The Christians would take care of them. This offered solutions to people.

            *The early church obviously had an emphasis on taking care of the             helpless because one of the early leaders, James, writes “Religion that God             our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and             widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted from the             world.”

5. The world was seeing people die for a cause.

            *For the first time, there were tons of people taking persecution with joy             in their hearts.

            *As mentioned earlier, Stephen was the first Martyr but he most certainly             was not the last. All but one of the original apostles were killed for the             cause.

6. Christians loved everyone – buried the dead, rescued kids, feed the hungry, gave housing to the poor.

            *Christians did not discriminate. They accepted everybody and took care             of as many as they could. This was very attractive to most people.

Persecution

• Even though the Gospel spread quickly, there was still a lot of persecution.

•  The 10 emperors, Nero to Diocletian, made it illegal to be a Christian.
• Even though Rome worshiped many Gods, they persecuted Christians because:
• They were considered a Jewish sect
• They would not worship Roman Gods or attend Roman games
• At the Roman games they would kill foreigners and other Christians just for entertainment.
• Abhorred the practice of Infanticide
• Roman culture would lay the baby girls out by the side of the road.
• They would either die or be raised into prostitution
• Equality of man and woman
• Christians were not persecuted because they worshiped Christ; they were persecuted because they worshiped Christ alone
• Rome made up lies about Christians
•  Christians were cannibals because they ate the “body and blood” of Christ
• Called atheists (because they denied the Roman gods)
• Christians would not sacrifice to Roman Gods and were therefore blamed for droughts, famines, infertility, etc

Conclusion

• The early church was able to spread the Gospel so quickly because of their passion and zeal for Christ. They faced a ton of persecution but they persevered through it which produced completeness as it says in James 1:2,3 (Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.)