LIGHT ON THE EARLY CHURCHThe Apostles and Thier Persecutors
BY PETER MASTERSFROM SWORD & TROWEL 1999 No 1
What happened to the apostles of the early church, and to their persecutors? What happened to
their followers, and those who succeeded them?
This is an account of some of the leading people and events which began in the New Testament
period, and ended outside its inspired record.
After Christ had been rejected by men, and had given His life a ransom for many on Calvary’s
cross, the Jewish leaders thought they had crushed Him and His followers. They had no inkling that this
small company of men and women were about to start a movement which would dominate world history.
Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate turned back to their ambitious pursuits. The death of Christ
meant nothing to them.
After forty years as ruler of Galilee, Herod Antipas journeyed in state to see Caligula Caesar,
Emperor of Rome. The cunning Herod, who had ruthlessly dominated his Jewish subjects as the puppet of
the Roman occupying power, now longed for the regal status of a king’s crown.
He and his wife Herodias had been offended and humiliated when Agrippa (his nephew, her
brother) was given the status of a king in his neighbouring area. Now they were on their way to request the
same.
Only ten years previously, Herod had listened to the fiery preaching of John the Baptist. But when
John denounced Herod’s adultery and improper marriage to Herodias, Herod threw him into a filthy
dungeon, where he stayed until the evil mind of Herodias found a way of getting her husband to behead him.
That was Herod’s reaction to God’s messenger.
Later, Herod was brought face to face with the Lord by Pontius Pilate, but although Herod
questioned Him at length, the Lord would not say a single word. Herod, in scorn and derision, scourged
Him, mocked Him, and ‘accounted Him as nothing’.
Those incidents were far from the thoughts of Herod as he headed for the seaside palace of mad
Caligula Caesar, on the Bay of Naples. He arrived with a great procession which exhibited something of the
wealth and splendour he had swindled for himself during his years of office. Caligula summoned him into
his presence. There, to Herod’s shock, the glorious climax of his career gave way to a crushing reward of
treachery. Caligula, frequently a monster of diabolical cruelty, had been convinced by King Agrippa that
Herod planned treason.
There was no court hearing; no trial; no defence. In a moment Herod felt the full force of Caesar’s
fury and heard his sentence - to be stripped of all power, status, lands and possessions, and banished to
obscurity for the rest of his life.
Pontius Pilate had suffered a similar fate only three years before. One morning he woke to learn
that he had been relieved of his post as Governor of Judea and ordered to return to Rome where he would
stand trial for incompetence. On his arrival in Rome, Tiberius Caesar was in residence. What happened no
one knows, but Pilate was never heard of again.
Herod and Pilate understood nothing of the things which were going on around them. ‘For had
they known it,’ says Paul, ‘they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.’
When Pilate left the region of Judea the Christian church was six years old, and the Jewish
leaders in Jerusalem were desperate for an opportunity to suppress it. Pilate’s departure left a temporary gap
in the Roman government which was just what they needed. Persecution broke out immediately.
Over the years, Stephen, one of the first Christian deacons, had been preaching that the Temple
and the priesthood were at an end. Only through repentance and faith in Christ could salvation be found.
Stephen’s preaching was so effective and powerful that the Jewish Council seized him on charges of
blasphemy. When he defended himself before them, they dragged him out of the city in rage and brutally
stoned him.
The death of Stephen was followed by a sustained persecution of Christians, and although the
apostles stayed, a great many Christians left Jerusalem for other regions, some travelling great distances,
preaching the Gospel wherever they settled.
It was at this time that the young Saul of Tarsus, who had witnessed Stephen’s death, and taken
up the task of rooting out Christians, underwent a dramatic conversion experience on the road to Damascus.
But it was not until six years later that Barnabas, finding himself overburdened with the ministry at Antioch,
made the long journey to Tarsus to find Saul, and ask his help. Saul returned gladly with Barnabas, and
together they conducted evangelistic meetings and taught the people.
In Rome, Claudius was now Caesar, a little old man with weak, wasted legs, a shuffling walk and
no attributes which appealed to the people. To boost his public image, Claudius badly needed a military
conquest, and Britain became his chosen target. In AD 43 he sent three great armadas of Roman galleys
packed with 30,000 soldiers. Southern Britain fell to the Romans inside two months making Claudius a
conquering emperor.
In Jerusalem there was more persecution of Christians. King Herod Agrippa had gained Judea to
the area under his jurisdiction (when Herod Antipas was banished). To please the leading Jews he seized
James, the brother of John, and executed him. Then he arrested the apostle Peter in the spring of AD 44, but
Peter was freed by an angel of the Lord. In the summer of that year Agrippa was acclaimed as a god, and
immediately struck down by the Lord. After the sudden death of Agrippa, the Roman authorities sent out a
new governor who firmly stamped out all persecution of Christians.
The result was that the churches, having been purged of insincere members by the rigours of
persecution, now entered a period of great expansion and blessing. The most famous events of this period
are the tremendous missionary journeys of the apostle Paul, from AD 47 to 58.
One piece of writing from the first century describes Paul as a small, strongly-built man, bald and
bow-legged, with a large nose and eyebrows that met. He may also have suffered a severe eye condition
which made him very unpleasant to look at.
Despite the difficulties, prejudice and fierce opposition which he encountered, Paul’s work led to
the conversion of countless people, and the planting of local churches in every place. In total reliance on the
Spirit of God for power, he employed only preaching to convince people of the Gospel message, and to
bring them to repentance.
Because his work was dependent upon the clear presentation of the Gospel, he would not
compromise with, or recognise, those who rejected or adulterated the Gospel, whatever their claims to be
Christian.
Peter, who preached the first sermon after the resurrection of Christ, also travelled very widely,
accompanied by Mark who served him as interpreter. They may have visited Rome together between AD 56
and 60, Peter subsequently moving on, but Mark staying to record the Gospel as he had heard it from Peter’s
lips. Numerous people were being converted to Christ in the capital of the empire, including army officers of
good rank, and members of wealthy, landed families. When, for example, the general who conquered Britain
returned home, he found his wife Pomponia had become a believer in a ‘foreign superstition’. The evidence
is that she was a Christian, along with her adult sons and daughters.
Pomponia may even have been present in the hushed, expectant meeting held at the home of
Aquila and Priscilla, when Paul’s letter to the Romans was read out in the spring of AD 57. Aquila and
Priscilla had met Paul while living temporarily in Corinth seven years previously, Paul having stayed in their
house.
The apostle longed to meet the believers in Rome. [1] His dream was to be realised in an
unexpected way. Having written to the Romans while in Corinth (on his third missionary journey), Paul
returned to Jerusalem carrying the offering of the mission churches for the famine-stricken church there.
As soon as Paul set foot in Jerusalem he met with an avalanche of hatred and abuse from the
Jewish authorities. In no time he was arrested, partly for his own protection, partly because the Jews wanted
him charged as a trouble-maker, and taken to Caesarea for trial before the governor. After a famous hearing
before Felix, Paul was remanded for two years, appealing to Caesar in AD 60. If a Roman citizen appealed
to Caesar - ‘to Caesar he must go’. At last Paul would go to Rome.
Claudius Caesar, now dead, had been succeeded by Nero, an overweight, fair-haired young man
in his early twenties. Nero was more endowed with conceit than anything else, and capable of terrible
cruelty. He murdered his own mother, and disposed of his legitimate wife and first mistress before marrying
a cunning woman who came to dominate him.
Nero amused himself by extremes. Proclaiming himself champion of the arts, he sang, wrote
poetry and built gymnasia to introduce body culture to Rome. At the same time he built a great stadium for
the most grotesque blood-sports, and personally indulged in the most depraved moral practices.
It was early in AD 61 that a small, weary-looking military escort trudged along the Appian Way
to Rome, bringing Paul the prisoner. Having suffered shipwreck off Malta, the party had at last arrived. A
crowd of Christians from Rome waited for him at a stopping place forty miles out from the capital. A larger
party gathered ten miles out.
The officers of Paul’s guard stood aside as church leaders greeted him amidst jangling chains.
Once in Rome, Paul was permitted to live in a rented house, and to receive visitors, but he was kept chained,
accompanied by a member of the Imperial Guard, for two years.
From the optimism in his letters from Rome to Philippi and Philemon, Paul fully expected to be
set free. In the spring of AD 63 he was. Spain was his destination now, ‘the limits of the West’.
As Paul left Rome, Peter most probably arrived, and sensing imminent danger, wrote to the
churches of north-west Asia. ‘Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold
temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be
tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.’
Christians were indeed on the very brink of the most violent persecution so far. On a hot, clear
night in July, AD 64, Nero was at his Summer Palace at Antium when fire broke out in Rome. Whipped up
by a strong wind it grew to monstrous proportions, spreading through three-quarters of the city. For nine
terrible days desperate families stampeded before it, as it devoured everything in its path, including Nero’s
Imperial Palace.
The young emperor returned in dismay. A disaster of this magnitude rendered his position highly
insecure. With mounting concern he heard rumours that he himself had arranged the fire, then watched the
city burn while playing his harp. To remedy the situation Nero devoted his fortune to a rebuilding
programme. But even then the public noted with indignation that his chief interest was the rebuilding of his
own new palace, fantastic in size and splendour, complete with his own 120-feet-high statue. Nero needed
more than self-promoting good works to pacify the people. He needed scapegoats for the fire.
Who were these people who kept away from official Roman pagan festivals, holding private
meetings to follow a foreign superstition? Ordinary people already suspected Christians of dark, immoral
practices in their ‘secret’ meetings. Here was Nero’s ideal scapegoat.
‘Therefore,’ says Tacitus, ‘Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the most extreme
measures of cruelty, a class of people loathed for their vices, whom the ordinary men called Christians . . . A
vast multitude were convicted . . . and their death was made into a sporting event: they were covered in the
skins of wild beasts and torn to pieces by dogs, or they were placed on crosses and set on fire . . . Nero gave
his own gardens for the spectacle.’
This was the signal for persecution of Christians throughout the empire. If Peter was not in Rome
during the fire and main persecution, he was certainly there soon afterwards. Either in AD 67 or 68, he
suffered martyrdom at Nero’s command, being crucified in an upside-down position.
Paul, after preaching across Western Europe (and possibly also Spain), returned to Rome. This
time he was placed under close arrest, facing certain execution. When he wrote his second letter to Timothy
(AD 67-68) only Luke was with him. The Christians of Rome were afraid even to visit him. They had ‘gone
underground’.
‘I am now ready to be offered,’ Paul wrote, ‘and the time of my departure is at hand’ (2
Timothy 4.6). He gave a last eloquent testimony before the rulers, and was then beheaded. Linus
(mentioned in Paul’s last letter) was left to lead the believers in Rome.
With the church approaching its fortieth year of life, and before ‘this generation’ had passed
(Matthew 24.34), a great prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ was about to be literally fulfilled in
Jerusalem.
Public disorder had been growing in the Holy City for some time because of the hopeless
administration of the Roman governor, Albinus. When Albinus knew he was going to be dismissed, he tried
to make things difficult for his successor by opening the prisons to liberate thousands of hardened criminals.
At the same time he did nothing to help nearly 20,000 craftsmen who became unemployed when Temple
repairs were finished.
The replacement governor proved to be even worse. His plan to ‘clean up’ Jerusalem consisted of
stirring the people to rebellion so that he could have an excuse to call in the larger Roman legions to
completely crush the city. He oppressed them with this aim, until the day came when a large body of Jews
stormed the Roman headquarters in Jerusalem and murdered the entire garrison.
The Roman authorities at Caesarea retaliated (AD 67) by sending 20,000 troops to end the
uprising. Perhaps, as they formed up outside Jerusalem, Christians remembered Christ’s warning to flee
when the desolation of the city was nigh. They may have left Jerusalem for Pella at this point, but it was not
quite the moment of destruction.
The troops, no one knows why, were ordered to withdraw. They did so. While the Romans
marched in sublime ignorance, Jewish guerillas tailed them. When they reached a notorious rocky pass, they
found themselves at the mercy of their pursuers. Caught in a geographical trap, the proud, undefeated legion
was utterly routed.
In Rome, Nero acted decisively. Vespasian was sent immediately to raze Jerusalem to the ground.
Vespasian had no sooner embarked on his mission than he was interrupted by the fall and suicide of Nero.
He seized the opportunity of successfully taking power himself.
Vespasian was a tough realist who soon put law and order back into the empire, including the
suppression of persecution. Christians everywhere breathed again.
Vespasian, however, did not forget the crime of Jerusalem. Late in AD 69 he sent his son to carry
on where he had left off. Soon, the terrifying spectacle of a vast Roman army met the gaze of the watchers
on Jerusalem’s walls. If believers had not left before, they did so now.
Vespasian’s order was total destruction. First the city was weakened by siege. Then huge Roman
battering engines were put to work on the walls. Finally, an overnight, all-out assault took the Roman troops
into their old fortress stronghold, the Tower of Antonia. From there, they battled for the Temple, the holy
place which every Jew would defend to the death.
It was a horrible battle culminating in the destruction of the Temple by fire.
When the Jews capitulated they were massacred. All that was left standing in the city was
then devastated. Jerusalem, the city that crucified a Saviour, was dead. The Temple and
the priesthood was finished. In the distant town of Pella the refugee Christian community
knew that Christ’s words were now fulfilled.
Footnote [1]Romans 1.11; 15.23
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