How The Church Has Been Neglected By - amazonia.fiocruz.br

Apologise, but: How The Church Has Been Neglected By

How The Church Has Been Neglected By Video

I am in the process of developing a Church History course for those who want to learn more about the church since its inception. This course will be about the Early Church, from the first to the fifth-century. One of the things we will be looking at will be the persecution of many early believers. This will be the first of six courses that I will put up on this site. They all will be totally free. Here is a sampling:. Neglectsd, at first, were not seen as distinct from the Jews in the eyes of the Romans. In continue reading first mass persecution, many Christians died as scapegoats. This was to be the nature of the early persecution of the church—sporadic and local.

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It grew out of the animosity of the populace towards believers, rather than a deliberate government policy. Pliny the Younger, who was the governor of Bithynia N. Turkey and who wrote to Emperor Trajan for clarification on what to do with Christians brought before him by neighbors or local authorities simply because they were Christians.

Trajan replied that Christinas should not be sought out, but if they were accused of being Christian and refused to recant, they should be punished. Those who were willing to worship the gods of Rome How The Church Has Been Neglected By to be pardoned and all anonymous accusations were to be ignored. How could I curse my king, who saved me? Many more died, including the consecrated widow worked for the church Felicitas and her seven sons. It began again under Septimus Severus in AD and many more more suffered death in the Coliseum, such as a 22 year old nursing mother, Perpetua, and her servant girl, Felicitas.

They were whipped by gladiators, run through by a wild bull, and eventually put to death by the sword. Then persecution abated for fifty years only to start up again in AD under Emperor Decius—it was the first one that was empire-wide. Thus, Decius had Christians perform just one pagan observance and they would receive a certificate of sacrifice, with which they would be perpetually safe from harm.

Some Christians bribed officials to get certificates without having to sacrifice. However, if they refused to burn incense to the gods, they were beaten and thrown in jail—no longer to the wild beasts.

Origen, a famous church apologist, was arrested, tortured, and then released. He died a few hours later.

This was called the Great Persecution and it was designed to extinguish Christianity from the empire. It prohibited all Christian gatherings and places of worship, and all clergy should be hunted down. The persecution continued into the reign of Galerius and then suddenly stopped in It has been estimated that by AD there were 7 million Christians est. Why were Christians persecuted? They were considered dangerous and counter-cultural. The Romans were superstitious in the way we understand it with all their gods and legends.

Christians refused to worship the gods of the empire and that caused great consternation because of all the superstitions regarding the anger of the gods leading to crop failure or military defeat, etc.

The Tradition of Legalism

After the persecutions were over and Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine, the martyrs and confessors those who suffered but who were not martyred were loved, reverenced, idealized and venerated. They were appealed to as intercessors when praying to God. Their bones became relics of veneration. At the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicea AD it was decided that relics must be placed on the altar of a new church before it could be consecrated.]