Acts 2:42-47

Acts is not just about justifying belief in Christ by explaining prophecies and blood sacrifices. It also shows how they built the communities that survived for a couple hundred years. Those communities eventually found favor with Roman emperors, then combined with them and eventually spread throughout Europe. I don't believe that Christianity caused the Fall of the Roman Empire, but I don't think they did anything to stop it either. They were in no position to take over leadership, nor did they encourage the budding sciences.

What we see in the book of Acts, and what is known to have continued, is that they took care of people. In the time after all the scriptures were written, as Roman power waned, Christians became the social services, especially in the country side. Claims have been made of a rapid spread of this new religion, but others say it remained at the level of other cults, in the lower single digit percentages. What is described here, the house churches, the distributing of goods, done in the name of Jesus, can be confirmed historically.

John 10:1-10

I once heard a pastor tell a story of moving to Australia and trying to preach about sheep and lambs. He found the analogies didn’t resonate with them. Then he found out they knew a lot about goat herding and it was very similar, so he just switched to goats. Some people are very attached to the words and would find that blasphemous. Others are not comfortable with being compared to sheep at all. There are characteristics of sheep that we don’t like; they are followers, they will jump an non-existent fence if they see another sheep doing it, they get fleeced, they need tending. But that’s stretching the analogy into places it wasn’t intended to go.

The people hearing this would have been familiar with sheep. They would know that herders really do call their sheep by name and are recognized by them. They would know this was used when they brought their herds into the city walls for safety, mixing them with other herds. So we hear some exclusivism here, but it’s walking a fine line. Inclusivity has its dangers if you just let anyone through the gate. The explanation in the second half seems to just be another explanation of how to achieve salvation. But there are also undertones of Roman persecution here and the community needing to protect itself.

Just how much the Romans cared about Christianity is not clear. Certainly, Romans were wantonly carrying out capital punishment for minor crimes. Those crimes included not making your sacrifices to the Roman gods. They called Christians “pagans” at the time of this writing. But this affected everyone, Jews, and every other minor sect out there. Saying that you are being singled out but are surviving anyway is a way of saying you are better than those with the military power. It is a way of claiming you have the more noble cause.

Sorting out the history is beyond my scope, so I will give a couple links. One is to an interview with Candida Moss, about her book The Myth of Persecution, How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. That second is a response to that.