The Cry of God's People for Liberation
Luke 18:7-8 ...will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them?I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”
Matthew 10:16-22 “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; ... But beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues; and you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. ...
Matthew 10:16-22 “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; ... But beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues; and you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. ...
“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved."
The Period beginning from Jesus and his disciples to the year 392 AD parallels the time from Jacob's family entering Egypt till the moment they were liberated by Moses about 400 years later. For us 4 centuries sounds like an eternity but in the long history of the world it sounds as a simple moment. God works without us having knowledge of it. God does not work for our restoration, without asking us to cooperate. Progress in the historical development of God's will comes about only when we join our will to His will. When we live in complete alignment with his will then history can move in the direction towards the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Though Jesus told his disciples that they would undergo a period of suffering, he did not do as God had done with Abraham and foretell that a period of 400 years would be required for his descendants to be liberated from slavery. Christians did not officially became slaves of a foreign country but they suffered for about 4 centuries intense persecution from the established rulers.
Though Jesus told his disciples that they would undergo a period of suffering, he did not do as God had done with Abraham and foretell that a period of 400 years would be required for his descendants to be liberated from slavery. Christians did not officially became slaves of a foreign country but they suffered for about 4 centuries intense persecution from the established rulers.
The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1883)
Courtesy of Wikipedia
However, Christians suffered several periods of persecution varying in intensity. Acts 7:54-59 narrates the first known murder of a Christian for his faith and describes how Stephen is stoned to death.
Early Christians Relationship with Judaism Generally, after Jesus' death the early Christians received persecution as they attempted to convert followers of Judaism. Thus Stephen, James the Just (the brother of Jesus), and James the greater
were murdered as the continued their attempts to reaching out to the people God had prepared to receive the messiah. Eventually, Jewish followers of Jesus were expelled from the synagogues, as Jesus had foretold. Though generally it is believed that the Birkat ha-Minim, or curse against the heretics (minim) was formulated in order to 'excomunicate' the Jewish Christians that still frequented the synagogues. According to the Catholic Sentinel that the two reasons for this expulsion was first, the inclusion of the person of Jesus in the definition of monotheism, and second, the abandonment of the prohibition to eat certain foods in the Torah and the rejection of the idea of a need to circumcise Gentile converts.
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| James the Just |
Persecution under the Roman Empire Christianity suffered different periods of persecution, sometimes official other times not,.beginning from the time of Nero as emperor (64-68) until the time of Diocletian, (284-305). History attributes Nero's persecution of the Christians to an effort to place the blame on them for the six-day fire that destroyed most of Rome, as two Roman historians, Suetonius and Tacitus report.
Under the rule of Diocletian what has been called the Great Persecution began with the banning of Christian practices and the imprisonment of clergy and leading to the command that every citizen make sacrifices to the Roman gods under the threat of execution. Though in his side of the empire he was supported in this efforts to destroy the Christian religion, Contantius as emperor of Britain did not applied this edicts, and later his son, Constantine, and Licinius's enacted the Edict of Milan in 313 officially ending imperial persecution of Christianity. It took about 80 more years so that Theodosius I in 392 for Christianity to find its ultimate liberation in the form of the imperial recognition of being the official religion of the Roman Empire.
We could say that Constantine laid the foundation and Theodosius I built the framework of the liberation and empowerment of the Christian Church in the West. Therefore, just as Moses arrived at the appointed time and executed God's will of bringing his people out of Egypt, the arrival of Theodosius I symbolizes the parallel appearance of a liberator for Christianity in the West..
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| James Tissot The Egyptians Are Destroyed Courtesy of Wikipedia |
Saint Ambrose barring Theodosius
from Milan Cathedral, Anthony van Dyck, c. 1620
Courtesy of Wikipedia
The first 400 years of the Christian era had ended with the establishment of the Christian Church in a position of great power within the Roman Empire. The Christian era paralleling the time of the Judges was about to begin.
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