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

Popular posts from this blog

We Need More Images

What is your favorite way to describe God? Is there a particular name of God in scripture that you are drawn to? What images and pictures come to mind when you think of God? These are questions I don't think we ask often enough. We all have an image of God in our heads that we work with. It may not be a literal picture, though it might be, but ideas and concepts we tend to associate with who God is. Some of those images and associations may come from the Bible, but some may not. These things are influenced by our upbringing, Bible reading habits, personalities, relationships, culture, and more. The way we picture God has a dramatic impact on the way we live our lives. For example, if the primary idea you have of God is "Healer," when you hear or read that you are made in God's image you will likely feel called to heal, be it physical ailments or spiritual wounds. But, if your primary image of God is "Judge," that changes things. You very likely might tend to...

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...

The Early Middle Ages: Historical Friday

The next segment of history that we are going to overview is the Early Middle Ages. This dates roughly from AD 450 to AD 1100. This is intended to be a very general overview. There are probably historians that would classify some other time period as the "Early Middle Ages" or a more specific time period. For our purposes this will cover the aforementioned time period. This was a very influential period in the history of Christianity. It saw the formation of what we now call the Roman Catholic Church and its separation from what we would now call the Eastern Orthodox Church. Before this time there was only ONE church. There weren't different denominations or groups. It is hard for us to think about in our modern context, but there was a time when Christianity was visibly unified. Brief History The first major thing to happen during this time period is the remaining three ecumenical councils. We discussed the first four several weeks ago. These councils discussed va...