All right. Well, and what we're going to talk about today is Christianity and ancient Rome, kind of the first three centuries, and giving an overview of what was going on in the church and how it grew and the revivals and the persecution. And then next week we'll talk about some of the theological things that were going on there in the period. If you've read the book of Revelation, if you went through our series on Revelation with us, what are the three enemies of the church? Revelation depicts, is it better to remember? No, well, the world, but there's a more colorful picture of it.
The dragon is Satan, and who, and he stands on the, he stands on the shore of the sea. What are the three monsters he calls up? Do you remember? Right, the false prophet, very good. And the harlot, right, the harlot, good, and what was the third one? The beast, yes, yes, there you go. The beast, the harlot, and the prophet. And we said that those three are the continual enemies of the church, the false prophet representing false teaching within the church, or outside the church, trying to lead people away from Christ. The, and this is the pulpit I broke the other day. That's funny. I remember the threshing sledge, illustration, wow, yeah, there's a nail sticking up through there. The false prophet would be false teaching. The harlot would be worldliness. And the beast is persecution, or just forced power, raw power. And the church in ancient Rome faced all three of these, most particularly it faced raw power. It was a time of persecution. And it did not take the church by surprise. It shouldn't have. Now, it's a little bit surprising to us. Honestly, it is very surprising to us. It is very shocking and kind of a faith-shaking moment when we as believers are called on to struggle and to suffer. Everyone of us, as I've gone through counseling, as I've seen in my own family, as I've seen in my own experience, when something goes badly and makes us what kind of cry out, what did I do wrong? God, you know, I thought I was doing everything right. You know, I thought if I followed you, then I was going to have prosperity like a river or whatever. Peace like a river and prosperity like the oceans of wave of the sea. Sorry, it's just my sermon text today. I don't know why I would have that committed memory. And that is not the promises of the New Testament. As a matter of fact, one of the most prominent promises in the New Testament is the promise of persecution. Matthew 5, 10 says, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. That alone didn't that sound like the greatest anomaly persecuted for righteousness sake. Well, if I were righteous, I didn't think you'd think we'd go wrong. Then Jesus goes on and said, rejoice and be exceedingly glad when they cast you out of the marketplaces, when they say all kinds of evil against you, rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who are before you. And this is something Jesus was very fond of saying, they've always persecuted the prophets, they're going to persecute me. They've persecuted everyone who's spoken the truth to them. They're going to persecute me and they're going to persecute you. John 15, 20, remember the word I've said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours. Don't expect to have an easier road than I had, Jesus says. Remember, I've been cast out, they've tried to stone me, they're trying to trip me up, they're trying to throw, they're throwing me out of their community, they're going to crucify me. Don't expect to have it better than I have. A servant is not greater than his master. And the New Testament apostles took all that seriously and they experienced the same kind of struggles that we experienced, right? And we have James talking to the people in his church saying, do not be fooled. Friendship with the world is enmity with God. You can't have both. If you're the friend of the world, you will not be friends of God. If you're friends of God, you will not be friends of the world. The two are everlasting enemies. Paul, in one of the last of his letters, written, we think from when we know it's from prison and Rome, when he was about to be executed, Maniro, he said this, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted. Everyone who desires to live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted. So the New Testament Christians were ready for this. They at least have been told that it was coming. And that's kind of what happened in Rome. That was their life story in Rome. It was not a life of ease. There's a great line and a hymn that we don't ever sing, I don't think. It's called, am I a soldier of the cross? Is he ever sung that song? Am I a soldier of the cross, a follower of the lamb? What a dare to name his name? I can't remember that line. The line I do remember is this, must I be carried to heaven on flowery beds of ease when others had to fight to win the prize and sail through bloody seas? That's the story of the church. And that's the story that we should be expected, that we should expect ourselves to have to walk through to differing levels. So that's kind of the preparation for persecution. And the question that comes up is, why? Why were they persecuted? And it's an odd question to answer. Basically, the Christians in Rome were persecuted because they were very obnoxious. And not because they wore t-shirts, they were inflammatory. It was not because they were looking for it. They did not go looking for persecution. They were persecuted in Rome because they were different. They were considered to be atheists because they only worshiped one God and in Rome, if you didn't worship at least 20, you were kind of out. There were all these kind of strange things about them. And they were just looked upon to be in very strange, or there's 10 reasons that a guy named, his name, I can't pronounce it very well, what, Sutonius, I believe, that's what we're going to go with. Sutonius was a, kind of a political Roman writer in ancient Rome. And he described Christians as being a different genus of humans. They're just different. They're not like any other humans on the earth. And he listed 10 reasons for why these Christians were just completely different than any other humans on the earth.
And first was this. They disapproved of Roman wars of conquest. They disapproved of war. They didn't think it was right to just go out and conquer people for the sake of conquering them. So clearly, they're not good Romans. Secondly, they disapproved of the bloody Colosseum gains. They protested them. There's a great story about a monk who had heard of the conversion of many in Rome and actually even after Constantine's conversion, which we'll talk about in a few minutes. He came back to Rome and he saw this crowd and he just kind of started walking with the crowd. There's great excitement. And they went into the Colosseum and he was appalled to see that it was in the Colosseum. There were two gladiators fighting to the death. And he was yelling at the top of his lungs in the name of God for bear. And he actually went so far as to jump down into the arena. And one of the gladiators, the gladiator who had already won and killed his opponent had to still had his sword out and the monk yelled out in the name of God for bear and the gladiator killed it. And that ended up being supposedly according to the legend, the history, the legend of the history you choose. The last of the Roman gladiator games, they disapproved this bloody Colosseum games. They disapproved of abortion and infanticide. So the first two, we would kind of put under the modern label liberal, right? I mean they're anti-war, anti-bloody games, anti-boxing, they're liberals. But now they're being very conservative. One of the great ways they did evangelism in those days is it was a common practice if you could not support your child to abandon it. And there were abandoned infants all over Rome, especially women, not women, girl, babies, females. And they would go through the streets and take them home and take care of them. And they disapproved of abortion and infanticide. They empowered women. It was very uncommon for women to be in any kind of, to be seen basically. And Christians had worship services and gatherings where the men and the women were equal and they were together. And that was very strange for Roman culture at the time. They believed in absolute truth. They believed there was actually a true, the singular truth that could be found. It was not relative. It wasn't always changing. It wasn't always moving. They would go into the marketplace of the ideas, but they weren't just taking every idea as being equal. There were settled truths. And they believed that those truths existed and argued for absolute truth. They believed that Jesus was the only true God in a way to heaven. And again, they were considered the atheists for that. They did. There's only one God. That's it. We're going to read it in a few minutes. The martyrdom of polycarp and he's referred to as the the atheist. They brought the atheist into the arena because he said there was only one God. And they mixed classes and races. They didn't keep the wealthy and the poor separate. They didn't keep people from different nations separate. They all worshiped together. They had radical plans to help the poor. And they again, Rome was a place where money equaled status. That's why they possible wrote in the letter that Bo referred to last week. If you have money, do not be prideful. Do not be arrogant. Do not be haughty. What's going on behind me? Everybody's looking behind me. Stop that. Don't do that anymore. I'm not that exciting in the mornings. It's a crazy morning. They disapproved of premarital sex or extramarital sex. Again, in a place where worship in the Greeks and Greek worship, orgies were commonplace and Roman life, sexual immorality was commonplace. These strange people disapproved of extramarital sex and they disapproved of homosexuality. And for all these reasons, Sutonus is saying, these people are not even human. How could any even a human have these ideas? And so there was always this undercurrent of persecution. And the persecution came at them from a variety of ways. There was a social persecution that were looked upon as being there were outcasts. Peter writes, and first Peter, they don't run with you the way they used to. People don't want anything to do with you. And just that kind of social persecution of not being allowed in good company. There was an intellectual persecution. They were made fun of. There were groups that would, like I said, they would get together and they would debate. They loved to debate in some circles in that time. And they would mock the Christians for the idea that their scriptures were true. And they would try to, they would very common for them to say, well, look, there's all these contradictions within your scriptures. How can you say they're true? There was a commercial, a very common commercial persecution that the Christians would not join the the Roman trade guilds. And if you weren't a part of the official guilds, then you could, you lost all kinds of business. And in order to be part of the guild, you had to go and worship in those temples, the temple of the God of that particular guild. And you had to very least prove that you're a faithful Roman citizen by praying the prayer to Caesar. You know, Kaiser Kurya, Caesar is Lord. And they wouldn't do that. And since they wouldn't do that, they were under commercial persecution. They lost a lot of money. And they were under political persecution. Basically, the political persecution looked like this. When everything bad would happen, a drought. Well, the Christians don't pray to the God it brings rain. And so it's the Christians fault. And those kind of persecutions became more and more common. And so, let me finish this. The first one began under the the first political kind of official persecution, top down persecution, began under the time of Nero when he was emperor. And there would be 10 more phases of persecution that would go on. It wasn't a continual thing. But the 10 between the first one began in about 60 AD. And the last one was in 300 AD. And we'll explain why it ended. But the first one began with Nero. And the story is, and it's kind of hard to put together. We're looking at the two ancient historians Josephus and Nero and UCB has tried to put together history. And there's a lot of legend in it. But essentially, what's the tradition is is that Nero didn't like a lot of Rome and he burned it down. And wanted to make it better. And what do you know? People got mad about that. It's kind of like there wasn't a, people did not approve of his city improvement plan. And so, there was real uprising. And he began to fear that there was going to be, he was going to lose power. And so he blamed the Christians. And he was the first one to outlaw Christianity, to outlaw gatherings. As a Christian church had to go underground. And they would began worshipping and what we call the catacombs. They were literally these kind of underground churches. And he made a big showing of his persecution of Christians. He was the first one to have them sown into skins of animals and thrown to the lions. He was the first one to kind of bring them into the arena and have the gladiators kill them for sport. He would have, make them fight with each other to the death. And he would, according to the stories, have them impaled on posts and covered with pitch and lit. And then it would throw parties and the gardens would be illuminated by the bodies of Christians. And that kind of thing went on. But it didn't last very long. It didn't gather him the kind of popularity thought it would. And so he ended. It was during that time. It was during the time of his persecutions that both St. Paul and St. Peter were killed. St. Paul was beheaded in Rome. St. Peter was crucified near Rome. And those persecutions lasted on and off for about 300 years. And there were different ways to deal with them. Christians would go underground and keep their Christianity secret. And that's when a lot of the kind of Christian symbols that we used today became popular. You know, the Christian fish, you know, the story of how that developed. They would, if someone was talking with someone else and they would begin to suspect they were talking with a Christian, they would draw kind of half arch in the dirt with their foot or with their staff. And if the other person was a Christian, he would draw the other half and make it into a fish. And then they would kind of share where they were worshipping. If the other person wasn't a Christian, they just kind of looked down and go, you know, hey, why don't you make a line of the dirt, you know. And so it was kind of one of their signs or one of the signals they would use to identify themselves as believers. Other people would deal with it in different ways. Some would just commit apostasy. They would deny the faith. And then a lot of times they would be stricken of conscience and want to come back. And that's all, and then that began to produce problems within the church because when the time of persecution would end, the people who committed apostasy a lot of times would be very ashamed. They would want to come back. And people in the church didn't know whether they'd take them back or not. It kind of created these hierarchies and all kinds of false beliefs about the holiness of martyrdom. The martyrs of the ones who are going to be the closest to God. And again, you can even see where they would get that idea from Matthew 5, right? A great is your reward in heaven before they persecuted the prophets who were before you. And so some people sought martyrdom. They wanted to be made into martyrs. Others would recant of their faith and then they wouldn't want to come back. And there's some great stories. And that has taken place during every phase of persecution. One of the most famous stories is from the English persecution during the Reformation, there was a priest named Billney, Thomas Billney, I believe. And he recanted during one time of persecution, came back to the church, and then he went back. And then there was another season of persecution. And this time he did not recant. And as the fires billied up around him, he took the hand that he had signed the papers of recantation with saying, you know, at that time was a Catholic persecution. And so he'd signed these papers saying that he would be a good Roman Catholic. And then later, when they came to burn him at the stake, he put his hand in the fire. I want to make sure that was the first thing of his that would be burned. And that's always been a common struggle in the church. Well, you know, we're going to be merciful to the people who basically gave up on the faith during a time of persecution. There's another controversy that came out of that. You'll will study probably next week where people began to doubt the integrity of their baptism. If I was baptized by a priest who recanted the faith is my baptism still good. And that's where St. Augustine kind of developed the doctrine of that that is the church and it's the faithfulness of Christ that is the crux of the baptism, not the integrity of the person who administers it. So some people would kind of be sneaky in the way they would get around the persecution. Some would hire somebody else to go make other sacrifices for them. You know, you're an unbeliever. So go do unbeliever things and in my name so that I can continue to be part of this trade guild. That was actually fairly common. And some people just stayed underground and worshiped underground. The most famous of the martyrs during that period was Polycarp. Polycarp is important to us. He was following me here. The last of the 12 disciples to die was the Apostle John. The other 11 were all martyrs. They all died violent death. The Apostle John was in prison and we believe he died in prison. And his last living disciple, his last living disciple was Polycarp. Okay, so Polycarp is kind of the last rider who had contact with one of the disciples and he was very influential in the forming of the Canon, the scripture and was a very influential teacher. And during one of the, I can't remember who the Emperor was at the time. It wasn't nearer. It was after that. He was persecuted and he was arrested and I want to read to it. It's a pretty famous story, the martyrdom of Polycarp. There's some legend here. I think it'll be obvious where the legend takes over. So I'm just going to read it to you. It's a fairly famous classic piece of literature, the martyrdom of Polycarp. And this is what it says. As Polycarp was taken into the arena, a voice came to him from heaven saying, be strong, Polycarp, play the man. No one saw who had spoken, but our brothers who were there heard the voice. When the crowd heard that Polycarp had been captured, there was an uproar. The Pro-Counts last him whether he was Polycarp. On hearing that he was, he tried to persuade him to apostasy saying, have respect for your old age. Sware by the fortune of Caesar, repent and say down with the atheists. Polycarp, so what's he saying? He's saying pray for Caesar, pray for the, say that he's the head, the high god, and say down with Christians, down with the atheists, those who don't think that Caesar is God. Polycarp looked grimly at the heath and multitude. Pretty funny. And just during towards them, he said, I'm sorry, the Pro-Counts then it begins to urge him saying, swear, reproach Christ, and I will set you free. Polycarp declared, 86 years have I served him, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blast them my king and savior? I have wild animals here, the Pro-Counts will say, I will throw you to them if you do not repent. Call them, Polycarp replied, it is unthinkable for me to repent from what is good and turn to what is evil. I will be glad though to be changed from evil to righteousness. If you despise the animals, I will have you burned. Polycarp replied, you threatened me with fire which burns for an hour and then is extinguished. But you know nothing of the fire of the coming judgment and eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly. Why are you waiting? Bring on whatever you want
and then the crowd collected wood and the bundles of sticks and from the shops and the public baths and when the pile was ready, Polycarp took off his outer clothes and undid his belt and tried to take off his sandals. But he wasn't used to doing that because the faithful always raced to do it for him. When they went to fix him with the nails, when they went to nail him to the stake, he said, leave me as I am, for he that gives me strength to endure the fire will enable me not to struggle without the help of your nails. And so they tied his hands and with nothing but his hands tied, he stood on the fire and allowed himself to be burned. And that was a fairly common occurrence these public burnings, these public martyrdoms. And that has been, that was common during the first century. It was common up until, well, there's a book called martyrs, it's actually a pretty good book if you read today. It's some some physiologists would say there were more people martyred in the 20th century than in any other century. And so it's still a very common thing. So that is, that's kind of the the actions of the beast and Rome. So why did they end? Well, the Romans were overwhelmed and really discouraged by their inability to stamp out Christianity. And Christianity continued to grow and it continued to grow. But it was never really, I mean, people weren't sure what to do with it. And every time barbarians and this is one of the, you know, every time the barbarians would win a war, Christians would be blamed. And that continued up until the time of an emperor named Constantine, and Constantine was in England fighting the dreaded Britons when his father died and everyone knew that he was the kind of selected one to be the emperor. And so he began to march back into Rome. Of course, the other, I mean, there was not like a, you know, election process. It's, as a historian, okay, it's funny when people complain about elections because you want to go, okay, they're messy. Elections are terribly messy as a, but, but far infinite to anything else that we've done, right? I mean, we, I think we would all rather have kind of a messy debate and messy campaign than have just, you know, Romney and Obama gather armies and fight to one of them's dead. I mean, when you prefer that, I mean, isn't this, you know, preferable? Yeah, they're spending way too much money and making false claims. But as far as I can tell, nobody's getting killed, right? And I'm not being forced to fight for one of them. So I'm, that's okay. That's the way they would do it, right? Every who had the biggest army would win. And Constantine was marching back and he was crossing over the rivers. And I'm not, I didn't, I went back and reviewed him, but I didn't remember the names. But one night before his army was terribly overmatched, he, as he was actually the day before his army was overmatched, she looked up into the sun and he saw a sign. Now, whether he saw a sign or not, doesn't matter, he believed that he saw a sign. And the sign was, it was a cross with a, with a bow through it. And in that sign, he, he, he'd heard a voice, he believed that he heard a voice saying, in this sign, you will conquer. And he went and affixed this sign. It was a popular symbol he's seen, a kind of a Cairo. It's kind of been melded to signs in a one, but it's a row kind of looks like a, about a P for those of you don't know Greek like me. And a cross, a, a Cai, which is an X. And so you've seen that kind of that, the P with the X through it, you kind of wonder what that's from. That's from Constantine. And he had that sign affixed to the shields of his army, believing that they would win. And he baptized his entire army. It's a real famous baptism scene too because the army was baptized. They went into the river to be baptized and they all held the right hands out. Because that was their sword hand. And they want to be able to kill still. And so they all got baptized except for the right hand. They didn't want the right hand to be baptized. And they went to battle the next day and they won the victory. And Constantine at, once he kind of brought peace and it was settled that he was the next emperor, he is the one who made Christianity legal. He did not make it the official law, the official religion of Rome. That would be about 100 years later. But he made it legal. And he was a friend of Christians. He had was very influenced by Christians in his own household and did a lot to promote truth. And he expelled different Christian heretics, which is a great story too because one of the things that they would do is he would, they would expel heretics, right? Which means if he didn't believe that Jesus was God, he would get cast out of Rome. Well, these people weren't terrible. They weren't evil people. They just had a little wonky theology. Most of the theology was good. And so what did they do when they were outside of Rome? Well, they did evangelism with the barbarians. And that saved a lot of lives because by the time the barbarians came into Rome, there were a lot more civilized than we thought they were going to be because they pretty much heard the gospel. So that was helpful. See, the Lord is always doing that. And that's the other side of the story we're going to end is throughout all these persecutions, what was God doing? It was God allowing them just to be persecuted and have the church stamped out. No, what he was doing was he was dispersing the Christians. So what happened? Think of the history of Christianity like this. They all stayed in Jerusalem, right? Jesus told them, take the gospel out to Jerusalem, to Samaria, and to the farthest ends of the earth. But they didn't. Other than the Apostle Paul and a few other kind of islands, they all stayed together. So what happened? A great season of persecution comes. Rome invades Jerusalem. All the Christians flee. They had to. They fled for their lives. And what happened? Well, they all went to different towns and they started churches. And every time there would be persecution, the Christians would flee. I have a professor, a missions professor and seminary. He was in China and the communist ran him out of China and then he went to the Congo and the communist ran him out of the Congo. And then he went to Brazil and the communist ran him out of Brazil. And wherever he went, Christianity was outlawed. Kind of a bad luck guy. And he used to say, I don't have the gift of martyrdom. I'd rather. He says, I have the gift to preach and run away and live to preach another day.
And that was the trouble a lot of Christians. They would disperse and take the gospel and they would disperse and take the gospel. And so the Lord was in this, just like the Lord was in the crucifixion. You know, and if you were watching the crucifixion, you would think, this is the darkest day in history. God is himself. God is crucifying his own son. And we know that that day brings light and hope to all of us. And so every time the persecutions would come, the Christians of that time would say, this is terrible. We're being destroyed. And they would be disperced. And the gospel would grow wherever they were disperced. And God was at work in the darkness and bringing hope and light out of what seemed hopeless. Please pray with me. Father, we pray that you will convince us that you were with us even in the greatest darkness when it doesn't seem possible that you could be aware of what we're going through, when it seems more likely that you don't care what we're going through. I pray that you would give us the calm and confident assurance that you're with us and that you are using the struggles of your church as birth pains to bring forth a glorious next generation.