Skip to main content

The New Testament Period: Historical Friday

Today marks the beginning of a long series over viewing the history of Christianity. With all the things we've been discussing, I feel that it is important that we all have a basic framework to reference. Today's section, the New Testament period, is one most already are pretty familiar with. Since that is the case, allow me to briefly describe how this will work.

Each time period will have three sections; a brief overarching history, important events, and important people. From time to time we will take a break from the usual big picture pieces in order to focus on particular events or people that are very important. Overall these may be a little longer than normal since there is so much ground to cover.

So today we begin with the New Testament period. This is basically the first century AD; the time of Christ and the Apostles. This blog will be shorter than most since we are familiar with this period from the New Testament.

Brief History

The story of Christianity really begins with the Ascension of Jesus Christ and the day of Pentecost. This is when the first disciples of Christ began to spread the word of Jesus' resurrection and begin converting people specifically to Jesus. 

From the day of Pentecost going forward, Christianity spread like wildfire throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. At first the Roman government considered it a new branch of Judaism, which was legal in the Empire. After a while they began to realize that this was something new altogether and began to specifically target Christians. 

Important Events

I am going to list a few of the big ones, but if you read your New Testament you will find a lot more.

The Day of Pentecost - when the Holy Spirit filled the believers and gave them the courage and ability to spread the message of Jesus.

Paul's Missionary Journeys - this spread Christianity to much of the Roman world.

The Death of Peter and Paul - this was significant since both of these men were looked up to as leaders in the church. They both died in Rome around the same time.

John's Vision on Patmos - what was recorded as the book of Revelation. This is the last book of the Bible to be written.

Important People

Again I will list a few, but read the New Testament to learn more.

Jesus - this goes without saying. None of this would have happened without Jesus. He is the king and ruler of all things. 

Peter - the main preacher at Pentecost, Apostle to the Jews, and the first to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles.

Paul - the Apostle to the Gentiles and author of most of the New Testament.

Nero - the first Roman Emperor to legalize persecution of Christians.

John - the last Apostle living. Wrote the Gospel of John, the letters of John, and Revelation.

Conclusion

This is all pretty much laid out for us in the New Testament. We typically know this history pretty well, but we don't always know what comes after. This is the format I will be using. Future blogs will have more detail. This one, again, we already know these people and events relatively well.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving, the day that we are supposed to celebrate all the things we are thankful for. It is a time of family reunions, football, and turkey eating. I sincerely pray that each and every one of you has a good day today. I'll admit that being thankful has not been easy for me this year. As pretty much all of you know, my mother passed away December of last year. Though she had been in the hospital for months, we were not expecting it. In fact I was sure she would be finally able to come home within a matter of weeks. Instead she peacefully passed on into the arms of Jesus, whom she loved more dearly than anyone else. As you can imagine, the entire family was heart broken. After what can easily be described as the worst Christmas ever, I returned to home to Illinois. It was here that I finally broke down. I spent the next months doing everything except being thankful. I cursed God, wept, screamed, begged to have her back, and was generally not the nicest person to be...
3 comments
Read more

What is Theology?

Greetings all! For the first true post I have decided to cover what will be one of the defining aspects of this blog; theology. I know that when I was growing up theology wasn't a word that was used in the churches I attended. In fact I don't recall ever hearing the word until I was in high school, and even then it was used negatively like theology was a bad thing. Theology is inseparable from Bible study, Christian living, and being a disciple of Jesus in general. It is an indispensable part of being a Christian. The thing is we haven't always treated it that way. We have allowed our theology to fall by the wayside, believing it to be useless or not appropriate. So what is theology exactly, and why is it so important? What is Theology? The word theology simply means "the study of God." The goal of theology is to reveal who God is, and when we know God we also come to know ourselves, sin, the world, and so on. What we've done in the past (and this may ju...
1 comment
Read more

The Name of God

In the book of Exodus we are introduced to many important elements that appear throughout the rest of the Bible. This is where we meet Moses, the first prophet sent to the nation of Israel. It is in Exodus that we first learn of the tabernacle and God's intention of living among his people. It is in Exodus that we witness the first Passover, which is the type of what is to come in Jesus. There are several other events that we could look to in Exodus, but there is one in particular that is very important that we have largely ignored; God revealing his name. We typically only refer to God by his titles. We call him Lord, Father, Judge, King, and God (yes, God is technically a title). I would like to emphasize now that there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so. In fact I would say that it is right for us recognize the power and authority of God in what we call him. What today's post is about is the fact that we have forgotten or even ignored the fact that God reveals his n...
1 comment
Read more