Part 1: From Apostles to Apostates
- ( Apostles) Persons who are commissioned by the Authority of Jesus Christ to preach the gospel to the World and administer the Affairs of his Church here on Earth.
- * ( Apostate) Persons who have intentionally abandoned their former believe system and those who follow them
As long as Jesus Christ was alive, the Jewish Authorities hounded him without let up. Inciting, heckling, and disrupting him during his public teachings, the shouting and accusations soon escalated to physical violence and in the end, his death. His fellow Jews threatened civil unrest if Christ did not cease and desist. The local Roman authorities had already reached their limits of tolerance with these almost ungovernable, religious fanatical Jews.
Yet what they feared even more were reprisals from Rome if they took no action at all to squash this latest rebellion.
Pilot had already been threatened with retribution because of his mishandling of Roman/Jewish affairs in Jerusalem. He was more that eager to collaborate with the Jewish Sanhedrin to bring about a quick and final solution which culminated in the execution of Christ. There on a cross, among thieves at Golgotha, the place of the skull, he died like a common criminal.
This deed, accomplished in a very ordinary, unspectacular location, was intended to end the rise of this troublesome teacher. Instead it was his launching pad, literally when he rose from the dead three days later.
There was nothing ordinary about the life of Christ. Not the way he was born, not the way he lived and not the way he died. Certainly no one had risen from the dead before. Every effort was made then, and ever since, to make it appear that none of the supernatural events recorded ever happened. His death and the disappearance of his body from the tomb was explained away. The Roman guards were bribed to falsely report his friends came by night and stole the body. Unarmed rebel-rousers overpowering the experienced, battle hardened Roman soldiers? I hardly think so. The penalty for such dereliction of duty was death. Where were the dead bodies of at least some of the rabble the guards had managed to kill before submitting? Where were the dead bodies of the soldiers who had been overwhelmed? Surely, they would have fought to their death. Where was the evidence to suggest such a scenario? The shoddy attempt at a cover up was obvious. The Jews do admit Jesus was a good and wise teacher. In the end, they could eliminate the teacher, but they could not eliminate his teachings.
In the short three years Jesus taught, his teachings were filled with wisdom and life-changing concepts for those who believed Him. He turned the skeptic’s conception of heir God from one of oppression and punishment to one of Love, Compassion and Forgiveness. He redirected their hopelessness into service for others and hope for an eternal life for all. He organized a Church with Apostles, Pastors, Priests and Prophets. He commanded them to go into the world to preach His word to every nation, tongue and people.
After his appearance following his crucifixion they, being filled with the Holy Ghost, went forward to do this missionary work as they had been commanded. With the exception of John, each sealed his testimony with the shedding of their own blood.
In one of Christ’s last acts of encouragement, He stood outside Jerusalem reassuring these disciples of His love and promised he would return. Then He suddenly ascended in a light into the Heavens. He was gone. They were on their own. What great courage and conviction it must have taken for them to pull their hoods over their heads, wrap their cloaks tightly over their shoulders and walk into the winds of adversity and death. In a few short years, they too, would lay lifeless, having sacrificed their all to the cause.
The message of Christ, his atonement and his resurrection were immediately subjected to a deliberate conspiracy to falsify and distort. This conspiracy reached its pinnacle of madness in the third and fourth centuries, A.D. Roman and Greek scholars and philosophers reconstructed the teachings of Christ in a manner more acceptable to their limited logic and understanding. Had Christ’s ministry been an exercise of futility? Had He failed? Ask the millions of followers who have embraced his gospel since. Ask yourself the same question.
This written testimony is a brief summary of that period of history. It hopes to catch both the miraculous as well as the malicious events that occurred to the orphaned child, the Church of Jesus Christ.
Abandoned almost at birth in a wild and scheming world, the Church grew into an almost totally unrecognizable adulthood. The simple yet profound gospel, taught with so much hope by Jesus of Nazareth, became a sophisticated lady of the night. Powerful and unprincipled, she reigned with blood and horror. Miraculously, an ember of its former self still burned in her calloused heart. This ember is what fed the hopes of millions down through the dark centuries that followed.
I will be satisfied if even one soul, my own perhaps, will have been improved from better knowing the history of those colossal events and the persons that shaped the western Church for the next 1600 years. After all, it was this same Church that spawned the New Testament , the Bible. It became the only witness of Christ available to countless Christian Martyrs for over 1800 years. And it was that same Bible that sent a searching young boy into the woods, to his knees in prayer in 1820 after reading these words in James 1: 5.
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not and it shall be given him. “
The long dark night of spiritual ignorance, and famine of hearing the word of God would have to wait almost two millennium before that event.