World History, Chapter Nine, revised

First century Rome, China, Africa, Europe, and the Americas

The classic work on Roman agriculture is the De Re Rustica (remember the word, rustic, for something quaintly rural) of 65AD, written by Junius Columella. He was a retired farmer who came from Spain. He tells us that the best lands were taken up by the villas of the rich, the next by olive orchards and vineyards, and finally, the worst was left to the farmer. The lowest slaves resorted to such farming, he laments, while the freemen were fleeing to better opportunities in the cities. He loved the soil and felt that it was a crime for men to abandon honest farming for what they would find in a city. In his writing he tried to persuade people to return to the soil, like good Romans should in his estimation.

It was during this period also that Pliny, the naturalist, wrote that the large farms had ruined Italy. Similar statements are made by such writers as Juvenal, Seneca, Lucan, Petronius, and Martial. Seneca complains about cattle ranches bigger than some kingdoms, like America would have had out west in the 19th century. Columella said that the masters of these ranches could not even ride around them to see how big they were. Pliny refers to one estate consisting of over 4,000 slaves and nearly 300,000 animals. Land distributions by Gracchi, Caesar, and Augustus had increased the number of small farms but most of these had been abandoned during the many wars and bought up by the rich. At the beginning of the first century it was realized that there were more profits to be made by cattle, oil, and wine than by growing grain and vegetables but by the end of the century that was being tested due to the rising costs of slaves. Thus began a long transition from slavery to serfdom, where an eventual peace time lack of captives for slaves led to the rich landowners breaking up their estates into smaller plots to rent to poor farmers who would have been called sharecroppers in the rural south of America a hundred years ago.

The tools of farming had not changed in 2,000 years. The plow pulled by oxen, the spade, the hoe, the pick, pitchfork, scythe, and rake were all still used just as they had been. Grain was ground in mills turned by water or animals. Horses were bred mostly for war or sport and did not usually pull the plow as the oxen had for two millennia. Olive orchards were numerous but vineyards were everywhere. Italy had 50 types of wine and Rome alone consumed 25 million gallons a year, two quarts per week for every man, woman, and child. Needless to say, many types of wine were not fermented and would be considered to be grape juice today. There was no sugar, as we know it, but bees were raised to provide honey for sweetening.

The ancient country home was also a small factory. Men and women produced produced leather and wooden farm and household implements, clay vessels, and tiles. A family was most successful when it provided all of its own needs and could sell its excess to the outside. Sometimes an artisan would set up shop in a village and serve many families but this did not change the independence of the individual family unit. The miller would grind grain for many people, bake the bread, and deliver it and over forty


144

bakeries were found in the ruins of Pompeii, the famous victim of Mount Vesuvius’ eruption. Everyone wore homespun clothing, only the wealthy were able to have it cleaned, bleached, and cut in a fullery. Some delicate woolen fabrics were made in factories.

Mining was done mostly by slaves and criminals in the gold and silver mines of Gaul and Spain, the lead and tin mines of Spain and Britain, the copper mines of Cyprus and Portugal, the sulphur of Sicily, the salt beds of Italy, iron of Elba, and marble in Luna with most of these enterprises owned by the state. The gold of Spain yielded the emperor Vespasian, whose son and heir, Titus, was the ravager of Jerusalem, approximately $80 million per year in revenue in today’s money. Tacitus tells us that it was the mineral wealth of Britain that was the prize of its conquest. The art of turning iron into steel had now moved from Egypt to the entire empire.

The building trades were organized into treebearers cutting and hauling lumber, woodworkers making houses and furniture, cement mixers, structores who laid foundations (note the similarity to the word, structure), arch builders, framers, plasterers, plumbers, etc. etc. Bricks and tiles were often provided by factories that made such and later emperors such as Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius made fortunes owning them. Tableware, dishes and the like, were mass produced and often of low quality. Glass, brick, tiles, pottery, and metalware were factory produced although there were only two factories in Rome itself, a paper mill and a dyeing establishment.

In the factories of central Italy, the managers and all of the workers were slaves while in northern Italy there were a greater quantity of freemen at work. The existence of slaves discouraged the development of machinery and as in the antebellum or pre-Civil War Southern United States inhibited the growth of industry in general. Having plentiful slaves lowers the level of ingenuity of the people and leaves a culture stunted in technology. As Booker T. Washington, a former slave himself, noted in his classic must read “Up from Slavery”, the slave culture degrades both master and slave and limits innovation and creativity, keeping a culture in a backward condition, even turning the elite into unimaginative and lazy people. Now, I am not classifying ancient Greece or Rome as lazy cultures, by any means, but merely saying that from Durant and Washington and Tacitus among others that one can see that for all the supposed glory of Rome and Greece, a civilization based on enslaving other human beings is a far step from what it could have been. Slavery breeds cruelty and even the Roman philosophers admitted that all cruelty is a sign of weakness, if I may paraphrase the brilliant Seneca, playwright and philosopher, who, although not a Christian, died during Nero’s wicked reign as did Paul and Peter.

Wheeled vehicles were forbidden in the city of Rome during the day. People walked and were carried by slaves on litters or chairs. For long distances they traveled on horseback or in carriages or chariots. Travel by public stagecoach could get you as much as 60 miles a day. Contrast that with the fact that you can drive that far in an hour or fly

145

that far by airplane in a few minutes. Caesar is said to have traveled by carriage 800 miles in 8 days, messengers bearing news of Nero’s death from Galba in Spain covered 332 miles in 36 hours, and Tiberius, riding day and night, is said to have traveled 600 miles in 3 days to be at his dying brother’s bedside. The mail averaged 100 miles a day. Augustus had modeled the postal system on the Persian system, carrying official correspondence at all hours of the day and night by horseback and carriage. Private individuals could only use it by special permission through a government diploma, meaning “double folded”, a passport entitling the bearer to certain privileges.

A more rapid means of communication was sometimes arranged by semaphores (a visual signaling apparatus with flags) flashing signals from point to point. It was by this method that Rome was notified when grain ships brought needed supplies to Puteoli on the coast. Merchants and private friends would deliver messages, also, and there is some evidence that under the empire private companies transmitted private mail. The speed of mail across Caesar’s Empire moved faster than it would across Europe until the advent of the railway system in the 1800’s.

The network of roads the Romans built was essential to communications and transportation then as they are today. One of the greatest problems that so-called third world countries have is the lack of those vital arteries of commerce and travel that crisscross more modern, civilized states. Until modern times, the highway system of Europe was inferior to that of the Romans. Italy had 372 main routes and 12,000 miles of paved roads. The empire itself had 51,000 miles of paved highways and many thousands of miles of secondary roads. Highways even ran over the Alps Mountains. One road called ‘the Appian Way’ can still be seen today. Magnificent bridges replaced ferry boats and at every mile on the consular roads a marker gave the distance to the next town. At certain intervals seats were placed for tired travelers. At every tenth mile a statio (note the modern word, station) offered a stopping place, where fresh horses could be rented and at every thirty miles was a mansio (note modern word, mansion) , an inn that was a store, a saloon, and a brothel.

In spite of what this sounds like it was still dangerous to travel alone. Innkeepers often robbed their customers, robbers and highwaymen were frequent dangers, and in spite of garrison of soldiers at each statio the wealthy preferred to sleep in their own carriages protected by their own slaves. Despite the difficulties and dangers there was more traveling than at any time before the modern era. Seneca spoke of how many people traveled great distances to see some remote sight and Plutarch spoke of “globe-trotters” who spent most of their lives at inns, on boats, and on the roads. The educated traveled to Egypt, Greece, and Asia, scratched their names on historic monuments, sought special climates and healing sites for health, enjoyed art collections at distant temples, studied under famous philosopher gurus, and grand tours around the empire were sold by merchants we would today call travel agents.



146

“Ancient Inventions”, by Peter James and Nick Thorpe, Ballantine books, 1994, tells us that the roads of Rome were only rivaled by the roads of China and China’s were not nearly as extensive. Shih Huang Ti, the great emperor who unified China, had created
nine lane highways, standardized the width of chariots at 5 feet, and made central lanes exclusively for himself, with anyone else using it being executed. The Incas of Peru after 1400AD had over 15,000 miles of roads for official and private use. But, the Romans were master road builders as they were creators of massive buildings and temples.

Rome had apartment buildings and public baths where patrons could sweat in the tepidarium (note modern word, tepid) and then jump into the cool waters of the frigidarium.

There are so many things you would recognize in ancient Rome that it might not take long before you felt at home there. Our modern appliances and power have replaced the dependence on human slaves but even today we buy clothing and products made by slave, prison labor in China or by the forced labor of children in third world countries who, if they were born here, would be going to school rather than working 12 hour days to provide the wealthy countries with everything from expensive athletic shoes to household decorations.

Now, let’s return to an interesting subject which I mentioned earlier; the Roman consumption of large quantities of wine. One might ask how a vital, thriving culture, such as Rome could have actually accomplished anything if every man, woman, and child were intoxicated much of the time from drinking wine. It is important to note that the 21st century assumption that all beverages referred to as wines are alcoholic and capable of getting one intoxicated is false. This has led to great confusion with regard to references to wine in the Bible as well, such as the erroneous assumption that Jesus turned water into a few hundred gallons of fermented wine called “good wine” in the text of John, chapter 2, with the possible result of getting a wedding party drunk out of their gourds. To quote one Bible commentator, Albert Barnes, from his ‘Notes on the New Testament’, written in 1875, but available on “amazon.com”; “Pliny, Plutarch and Horace describe wine as good, or mention that as the best wine which was harmless or innocent—poculis vini innocentis. The most useful wine—utilissimum vinum—was that which had little strength; and the most wholesome wine—saluberrimum vinum—was that which had not been adulterated by ‘the addition of anything to the must or juice.’ Pliny expressly says that a ‘good wine’ was one that was destitute of spirit. Lib iv. c.13. It should not be assumed, therefore, that the ‘good wine’ was stronger than the other. It is rather to be presumed that it was milder. That would be the best wine certainly. The wine referred to here was doubtless such as was commonly drunk in Palestine. That was the pure juice of the grape. It was not brandied wine; nor drugged wine; nor wine compounded of various substances such as we drink in this land. The common wine drunk in Palestine was that which was the simple juice of the grape."(Page 197). Pliny clearly says in his ‘Natural History’ that wines are most beneficial when all their potency has been removed. Plutarch


147

remarks in ‘Symposiac’ that wine is much more pleasant to drink when it doesn’t get one drunk and this is accomplished by a filtering process.
Columella also goes into some detail in his writings on how various fruits are converted into unfermented wine or what we would call grape juice. Pliny remarks in ‘Natural History’ that due to the tendency of fermented wines to grow moldy and stink it is not always an easy process to make them successfully. Columella tells us that unfermented grape juice kept better than fermented wine. Cato, writing nearly two centuries earlier, in his work, ‘On Agriculture’, reviews some of the problems with the preservation of fermented wine. Quoting from the book, ‘Wine in the Bible’, by Samuel Bacchiocchi of Andrews University; “The custom of preserving grape juice by boiling it down into a syrup has survived through the centuries in the Near East and mediterranean countries. This beverage is known as vino cotto (boiled wine) in Italian, vin cuit in French, nardenk in Syriac and dibs in Arabic. In its article on "Wine," the John Kitto’s old but renowned Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature quotes several nineteenth century historians on the use of boiled grape juice in the Near East. One of them, Dr. A. Russell, in his Natural History of Aleppo, writes: "The inspissated juice of the grape, sapa vini, called here dibbs, is brought to the city in skins, and sold in the public markets; it has much the appearance of coarse honey, is of sweet taste, and in great use among the people of all sorts."
Similarly, Cyrus Redding, in his History of Modern Wines, states: "On Mount Libanus, at Kesroan, good wines are made, but they are for the most part vins cuits (boiled wines). The wine is preserved in jars." J. D. Paxton, who witnessed a vintage in Lebanon, also says: "The juice that was extracted when I visited the press was not made into (what is now called) wine, but into what is called dibs." The common use of unfermented, "boiled wine" in the Near East during the nineteenth century is also attested by several travel accounts.
Rev. Henry Homes, an American missionary to Constantinople, in his article on wine published in the Bibliotheca Sacra (May 1848) gives this account of his observations: "Simple grape-juice, without the addition of any earth to neutralize the acidity, is boiled from four to five hours, so as to reduce it one-fourth the quantity put in. After the boiling, for preserving it cool, and that it be less liable to ferment, it is put into earthen instead of wooden vessels, closely tied over with skin to exclude the air. It ordinarily has not a particle of intoxicating quality, being used freely by both Mohammedans and Christians. Some which I have had on hand for two years has undergone no change."
So, be careful when assuming that the two quarts of wine drunk by every man, woman, and child each week as referenced earlier from Durant created a population of roaring drunks who just happened to conquer the Mediterranean world or that Jesus got a wedding party plastered in the book of John. Look at the back of your hand. Now, turn it over and look at the palm. See, there are two sides to everything. I would be cautious

148
about a Christian who would argue vehemently for his right to consume alcohol as a recreational beverage and then say loudly, “well, Jesus turned water into wine, so there”.
But, I understand that you might disagree with me and I do welcome a good argument.
Now, let’s go back to Roman engineering. Durant makes this statement that sums it all up very neatly; “ The ships and roads that carried goods, the bridges that bound the roads, the harbors and docks that received the ships, the aqueducts that brought clean water to Rome, the sewers that drained the rural marshes and city’s waste, were the work of Roman, Greek, and Syrian engineers operating with armies of free labor, legionaries, and slaves.” They lifted heavy stones using cranes that were worked by windlasses or treadmills or the backs of men, they dredged harbors, emptied lakes, and drained swamps. Some of the most amazing public works ever made were performed under the first Caesars in an attempt to alleviate unemployment and to beautify Rome. Roman roads were so well built that many of them are still in use 2,000 years later.

The Roman bridge building was helped by their use of Egyptian learned principles of hydraulic engineering. With regard to the aqueducts, Pliny thought they were Rome’s greatest achievement, bringing fresh water in the amount of 300 million gallons per day a distance of 1300 miles. Due to his copious writing of books, Sextus Julius Frontinus was Rome’s most famous engineer. He also had served as a praetor, governor of Britain, and several terms as a consul.

Finally, banking and trading were also highly advanced in first century Rome.

In addition, I would say that if slaves had not been so plentiful that Roman inventiveness might have given us machinery that would have rivaled what was available at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Roman art of the first century owed a great debt to Greece but Rome’s greatest artwork was its architecture.

With regard to Religion, as the typical Roman became more wealthy, more in love with money, and more cynical there was evidence that he or she was more likely to show either a disdain for religion or a passing tolerance of it. Romans were expected to honor the goddess, Roma, as an expression of loyalty to the state, and eventually, as stated before, acknowledge the emperor as a deity to be worshipped. Other faiths were permitted as long as they followed these basic guidelines, as well. The emperor Claudius encouraged the worship of the Great Mother which we would know as Diana in Asia Minor, Ishtar, Minerva, and Cybele among other names. He established her feast around the vernal equinox, from March 15 to 27. Her chief rival was the Egyptian, Isis, which is simply another form by which the same deity is known and Caligula was the first emperor to appropriate public funds to build her a shrine. Domitian took part in the festivals of Isis and Commodus is even have said to have walked humbly behind the

149

priests with shaven head holding a statue of the monkey god, Anubis, in his hands. Another popular god was the the sun-god, Mithras. The Mithraic cult tended to secrecy and only its initiates were taught its secrets. December 25th was his birthday and his worship centered on Sun-day.

Moving to China, we have Wang Mang, the socialist emperor ruling from 5AD to 25AD. Buddhism comes to China around 67AD and around 100AD we have the first known manufacture of paper in that culture. The Han Dynasty flourishes from 206BC to 221AD.

Wang Mang was a reformer who was known as the consummate gentleman who distributed his income among his friends and the poor. He lived frugally himself but was a patron to scholars and the arts. He surrounded himself, not with politicians, but with scholars and artists as well as philosophers. He abolished all slavery remaining and nationalized land, dividing it into equal tracts among the peasants. He forbade the sale or purchase of private property and continued state monopolies on iron and salt and added to them government ownership of mines and state control of alcoholic beverages. In addition, he also fixed prices for commodities. The government itself made grants and loans for any productive enterprise.

However, Wang failed to understand man’s inherent greed and lust for power. He worked long hours to try to improve his kingdom and was heartbroken when social disorder prevailed. Natural disasters, so normal in China, continued to work against his planned economy. Revolts broke out among his people. These revolts were probably financed by the wealthy who resented his rule. The Hsiung-Nu, whom we know as the Huns in the west, overran the Northern provinces. These people, according to ancient historian Szuma Ch’ien, were descendants of Shun-wei, of the old Xia ruling family, although archaeologists dispute this due to the variety of Hsiung-Nu burial structures making any understanding of their origins complicated and difficult to confirm. Finally, the rich Liu family led a general rebellion and slew Wang Mang, annulling his reforms, and returning everything to its former corrupt state.

The Han dynasty ended in a series of weak emperors and chaos.

In Africa, many historians credit the first century with the beginning of the East African city-states that were so powerful and important until the great worldwide plague that devastated the ancient world 5 centuries later. The Kingdom of Axum or Aksum was listed by the Persian writer and Christian heretic, Mani, along with Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great powers of his time in the third century AD. There is little record of established ancient kingdoms in West Africa at this time but this may be more due to the lack of a written form of language in these areas than a lack of activity.

According to J.M. Roberts’ “A History of Europe”, 1997, Penguin Books, the Celtic people of Central Europe, before they were conquered by Julius Caesar and their lands

150

made a part of the Roman Empire, were not quite the barbarians that the Romans portrayed them to be. Some of their languages still survive on the fringes of Europe. Also known as the Gauls, we today still have vestiges of the Irish and Scots Gaelic language. They were skilled iron workers, Roberts tells us, and attained a high level of technical ability and artistic achievement. They eventually covered Europe from Britain, to Spain, to even Northern Italy, where they came in conflict with the rising Latin state. The Greeks called them Keltoi while the Romans called them Gallii, both of which have come
down to us as Celts and Gauls for the same people. They were considered to be warriors of great ability and enthusiasm and the Romans often described them by their individual tribal names such as Belgae, Helvetii, and Allobroges among others. They shared physical characteristics such as the Celtic Roman heroine Boadicea’s red hair and may have felt some ethnic sense of brotherhood above the tribal level but there was never a political unity that had a chance of overcoming or resisting Rome. By the first century they had been, for the most part, conquered.

Russia, like Africa, did not come into great importance until much later due to scattered tribal loyalties and a lack of political cohesion plus the severeness of the climate and the variety of said climate and terrain over a vast territory. The Slavic people that we know today as the backbone of Russia were preceded by the Scythians mentioned by Paul in Colossians 3:11. We go to Nicholas Riasanovsky’s 1993 edition of his 1963 work, “A History of Russia” to learn the Scythians were defeated and overtaken by the Sarmatians. This Scytho-Sarmatian culture was heavily influenced by the Greek speaking world of Alexander and his political descendants. Eventually, a Germanic people known as the Goths overthrew these Slavic peoples. They divided into the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths and ruled Southern Russia from 200AD when they over ran the Scytho-Sarmatians until about 370AD when they were replaced by the Huns.

Northern Europe in the first century AD included Roman Britain, which took nearly the entire century to subdue, Gaul, now also under Roman authority, and the Germanic people north and just outside of Rome’s control but with a great deal of trading and interaction with Rome. Spain, also recently completely conquered, lies within the borders of the Roman Empire in the first century, having been completely conquered by Augustus’ deputy, Agrippa, in 19BC, according to Raymond Carr’s, “Spain; A History”. Augustus divided the peninsula into three provinces; Baetica, Hispania from which we get the word Spain, and Lusitania, which comprises modern Portugal. By 26AD the region was basically at peace and only one Roman legion maintained law and order there. In comparison, Britain required no fewer than three legions to police it. By 71AD Vespasian had granted the communities of Spain full rights within the Empire as citizens and Rome went on a fantastic building spree in this province. The Roman Empire’s impressive 119 arch aqueduct was built at Segovia and the Alcantara Bridge which crossed the Tagus River at the height of 150 feet (that’s 15 stories tall) was Rome’s highest bridge. Roman law ruled supreme in the first century. The Pax Romana, or Roman Peace, enforced by a legion of soldiers, helped Spain to prosper in a way it did not do again until its plunder of the Americas began over 1400 years later.

151

Turning to the book, “A History of the Vikings”, written by Gwyn Jones, we learn that Augustus had sent an expedition beyond the Rhine and around Jutland coming into contact with several Germanic and Scandinavian people. The Cimbri, among others, sent delegations to Rome and exchanged ambassadors. In Nero’s reign, another fleet entered the Baltic Sea. This was around 60AD. Pliny the Elder wrote in his Natural History that in the bay Codanus beyond Jutland, there were a great many islands, the largest of which
was Scadinavia, which scholars believe to be the southern part of the Scandinavian peninsula. By the end of the first century, Tacitus has identified a prominent tribe of this region as being the Suiones not only distinguished by their powerful warriors but by their impressive fleets of ships. Modern scholars assume these to be the Svea or the Swedes of the Uppland in Central Sweden. Fifty years later the geographer, Ptolemy, draws a rough map of the area and calls the furthest island of four beyond Jutland, Scandia. It is 400 years before anyone else attempts to understand what lies within the realm of what we call Scandinavia today.

Returning to the continent that bears the name of the Roman province that occupied a tiny part of its Northern border with the Mediterranean Sea called Africa. We have a similar situation in regard to Asia. The entire continent is named after a relatively small portion which occupies what is now called Asia Minor, or the country of Turkey. The province of Africa contained parts of modern day Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya which came under Rome’s control after the Third Punic War with Carthage.

Aegyptus was the Latin spelling of the Roman province of Egypt. There was a very interesting city in this province, named Alexandria, one of the many Alexandria’s founded by the tremendous ego of Alexander the Great. It deserves some attention in this course due to its importance in history and the great contrast between it and Antioch, in the propetorial province of Syria, where Christians were first called by that name as referred to in Acts 11:26.

According to Durant, a second century census of Alexandria, Egypt reveals that over 40% of the city’s population of 800,000 was Jewish. Occupying 2/5 of the city was the largest assemblage of Jews in the world at that time. With their initial settlement occasioned by a rebellious flight from divine punishment (see Deuteronomy 28:68 and read Jeremiah 42, 43), the later and larger waves of immigrants were enticed by the materialistic overtures of Alexander himself.

As one would expect, the strong intellectual temptation of Greek philosophy began its subtle encroachment with the climax of Jewish defection realized under the Jewish scholar, Philo, who lived from 20BC to about 50AD. He established a theological school to promote the integration of the Old Testament Judaism with Greek philosophy. I would recommend Dr. William Grady’s book, “Final Authority”, for more insight into the apostasy of Alexandria’s Jewish population. Dr. Albert Newman in his ‘Manual of Church History, Volume I’ says of Philo, and I am quoting;


152

“He was of the opinion that the Greeks had derived from the Jewish Scriptures all that was wise, true, and lofty in their thinking. It was his task, as it had been the task of others of his type, to show the complete harmony of the Divine revelation of the Old Testament with all that is best in Greek philosophy…The fact is that his modes of thought and views of life were fundamentally those of the Greek philosophy…and he undertook to show by applying the allegorical system of interpretation to the Scriptures that these were not as
they seemed to be , simple, unsophisticated narratives of the dealings of God with His people, but that underneath the anthropomorphic and anthropopathic representations of God and the uncouth representatives of the sins and follies of the heroes and worthies of Hebrew history, everything that was wise and exalted in Greek philosophy lay concealed.”

Later, the great Latin Church leader, called “father”, in direct disobedience to Christ’s admonition of Matthew 23:9 with regard to theological terms for teachers, Tertullian would also employ the allegorical method of scriptural interpretation. Justin Martyr, another early Christian leader, would also attempt to form a bridge between pagan Greek philosophy and the Bible. We can see by the efforts of these highly regarded men that Greek and other pagan philosophy was introduced into mainstream Christian thinking at an early time, a compromise with the world that reformers have always attempted to expunge. Read Colossians 2:8 and 2 Corinthians 2:17.

Edersheim, in his “The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah”, Erdmans publishing, 1971, says of Philo;

“Everything became symbolical in his hands, if it suited his purpose: numbers (in a very arbitrary manner), beasts, birds, fowls, creeping things, plants, stones, elements, substances, conditions, even sex – and so a term or an expression might even have several and contradictory meanings, from which the interpreter was at liberty to choose.”

As a member of one of Alexandria’s leading families, seeing that his brother was a political leader in the city, Philo’s knowledge of Greek was so extensively better than his own native tongue of Hebrew that it was said of him, “Plato writes like Philo”, Durant tells us. He was also the chief spokesman for the city’s “Great Synagogue”, a building so huge that a system of relay signals had to be used to ensure a synchronized responsive reading. It is not surprising that most of the scholars I’ve read agree that Egyptian manuscripts from Alexandria in particular are invariably the most corrupt as evidenced by the fragments of papyri found. This will play an important part later in how two strains of the Bible came down to us; one pure and one tainted by corruption from Egypt.

Bible typology backs up this negative view of Egypt. The book of Hebrews presents Egypt as a type of the world: Joseph’s bones were not permitted to remain there (Exodus 13:19); God called both His nation (Exodus 15) and His Son (Matthew 2:15) from there; and He would not even accept the horses that were brought from there (Deuteronomy 17:16). The book of Acts records NO missionary activity to Egypt (which accounts for no

153

original autographs coming from there). The Bible’s first book ends with “a coffin in Egypt”. Egypt was a land obsessed with death, if you remember our earlier classes, a true land of coffins.

Alexandria was a magnificent city, there is no doubt. Durant says;

“Of Egypt’s 8,500,000 population its capital had now some 800,000, second only to Rome; in industry and commerce it was first . “Everyone in Alexandria is busy” says a letter, questionably Hadrian’s; “everyone has a trade; even the lame and the blind find work to do.” Here, among a thousand other articles, glass, paper, and linen were produced on a large scale. Alexandria was the clothing and fashion center of the age, setting styles and making the goods.”

The Emperor Hadrian settled the matter more clearly when he said, “Money was the people’s god.”

The city also had a library that was famous throughout history containing over 700,000 papyrus rolls, which the Moslem invaders several centuries later used to heat the city’s baths for several months when they burned them.

Alexandria was also noteworthy in that Durant tells us that an ancient commentator referred to Alexandria as the house of Aphrodite, dedicated to the worship of the great goddess known as Venus, Diana, Ishtar, and other names which is so prevalent in history, the feminine side of Satan, the great deceiver, and enemy of all that is good and holy.

In the late second century a theological school is established at Alexandria that will be the source of a great deal of corruption of Biblical manuscripts but we will discuss that later.

By contrast, Antioch, where Christians were first called as such, produced the first two Bibles in the middle of the second century which we might call complete Bibles in the Old Latin Bible, translated directly from the Greek manuscripts with regard to the New Testament and the Syriac Peshitta, meaning “simple” or “common”. Naturally, with such a great concentration of disciples living at Antioch and having such a direct link with the apostles themselves one would expect more reliable manuscripts, closer to the originals, to be found coming from there.

Another topic of interest of this time period was the Essenes, a sect of Judaism that existed from the second century BC to the first century AD at Qumran, a plateau in the Judean desert near the Dead Sea. A great many scrolls were discovered there in the late 1940’s that, to a great extent, back up the Bible text we have today, although one should be cautious when clinging to the “Dead Sea Scrolls” as they are called, for affirmation of the Bible due to the limited range of scholars and Christian church groups who have handled them, translated them, and published their findings. Scholars are in dispute, in

154

fact, as to who the Essenes actually were; a monolithic group of ascetics seeking religious purity or a general name given to a large assortment of radical fringe groups of Judaism. Even their location at Qumran is hotly disputed.

Now, we’ll wrap up the first century with a trip to the Americas. In Peru we pass from the time of the Nazca people who gave us the enigmatic desert drawings that only appear to make sense from the air, which is a mystery, to the Wari Empire, understanding that a great many of the designations made by archaeologists for pre-literate cultures are based on the discovery of varying types of pottery.

The decline of the Olmecs in Mexico resulted in the emergence of a culture based at Teotihuacan, a city first founded about 300BC that by the middle of the second century was the major metropolis of the Americas. To quote the online encyclopedia called Wikipedia;

“Its influence stretched across Mexico into Central America, founding new dynasties in the Mayan cities of Tikal, Copan, and Kaminaljuyú. Teotihuacan's influence over the Maya civilization cannot be understated: it transformed political power, artistic depictions, and the nature of economics.…. By 500 A.D., Teotihuacan had become the largest city in the world. Teotihuacan's economic pull impacted areas in northern Mexico as well. It was a city whose monumental architecture reflected a monumental new era in Mexican civilization, declining in political power about 650 B.C. -- but lasting in cultural influence for the better part of a millenium, to around 950 A.D.”

The cultures we have discussed, for the most part, are sophisticated in many respects, place a great show on scientific achievement and scholarly pursuits, have built magnificent structures, and have highly organized societies and mature religious beliefs and practices, but in keeping with the Bible’s statements in Daniel 4:17; Luke 4:5,6; and 2 Corinthians 4:4 are only held together by force and are under the operation of the enemy. The secular historian’s glorification of past human empires is in direct conflict with the Bible’s clear statements about mankind’s condition. Humanity’s greatest advances that affect the majority of people at any given time in history are improvements in communication and transportation which bring us all closer together, making the world smaller, confusing political and ethnic boundaries, and preparing the world for the inevitable one world rule. Every great event in history starts out with a man, becomes a movement, decays into a machine, and then ends in a monument. All civilizations in the mainstream of human events strive for power and empire and then wind up decaying and disintegrating. Some theologians have called this the “Law of Human Collapse” in that everything that mankind attempts to do without God’s blessing or in obedience to His written word is doomed to failure. All utopias without God’s active presence through the Lord Jesus Christ are mere fantasies of man’s rebellious imagination. Now, we have passed the most significant, the greatest point, in human history; the birth, life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, our only saviour.

First Thessalonians, Chapter Five

1 ¶ But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.
Now, Gentile Christians are told what the Hebrew Christians had been told by Jesus.
Acts 1:6 ¶ When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? 7 And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.
Even before that, Jesus has warned them that, of the events of the end, specifically when the final rapture occurs, that it is not for anyone by God the Father, the soul of the Godhead, to know.
Matthew 24:36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
The “day of the Lord” is specifically the time of judgment coming at the end of the Great Tribulation but can refer to the entire time period beginning with the Rapture of the church and until the Great White Throne Judgment. It will surprise them and Satan has no idea when that time is coming and neither do you now. Just type in “day of the Lord” into any computer Bible search engine and you’ll see that the “day of the Lord” is a reference to any judgment from God, similar to when God refers to “visiting” someone or to His “visitation” as in the common phrase parent’s use, yelling from the top of the stairs, “you don’t want me to come down there”.
There were times under the Old Testament where God warned that His day, this particular time of judgment was coming. When it came, it was sudden and horrifying. Here, Peter is referring to the end of the Millennium when God recreates the earth and the heavens.
2Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
We Christians, moved by the current celebrity of the day, usually someone who has ripped off Clarence Larkin’s works, think that things will get really bad before the Rapture of the church, the removal of the church, happens. But, that’s not necessarily the case. I believe mankind will be full of himself and his accomplishments and think everything is really going spiffy. Faith will take a back burner. Look at World War One. Everyone predicted a golden age for mankind at the turn of the century, a new age of understanding and enlightenment. Then, the world exploded in a fire that was only quenched with millions of dead, then a short break as combatants rearmed and realigned and then less than twenty years later another explosion, the likes of which the world had never seen, then what followed was the fire of a thousand little explosions regarding unsettled scores and enmities. We are still dealing with it now.
4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
We should not be surprised at any of the events to come. We should be looking up expectantly waiting for the Lord to call us out even if that doesn’t happen in our lifetime. We will be with Him eventually anyway. “Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die”, a movie villain once said. Be prepared in your mind for what is to come, either the Rapture or your death. Don’t let things going good or bad in the world deceive you. Even if mankind were to usher in some kind of golden age where everything was hunky dory don’t be fooled.
5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
Notice that what comes after the colon further defines what goes on before through contrast of opposites.
We are the children of light, light that was here before the sun, moon, and stars;
Genesis 1:3 ¶ And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
John 1:4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 ¶ And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. 8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
2Corinthians 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
It was day when Jesus walked on the earth. We are children of that day.
John 9:4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
The long night began when Judas left to betray the Lord and it will be daylight when Christ returns.
John 13:30 He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night. (note the colon referring you back to Judas’ behavior)
Romans 13:12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
Psalm 30:5 For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
Psalm 130:6 My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.
The darkness is evil and wickedness, like the abyss of space, cold and unforgiving, full of devils.
Genesis 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
John 1:5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
John 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
John 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Colossians 1:13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:
1John 2:8 Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.
Acts 26:18 To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.
6 ¶ Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
The command to “not sleep” is contrasted here with watching and being sober. Sleep is often linked to drunkenness in the Scriptures. You can be drunk with the world and its pleasures and be asleep to what is coming. Now, don’t misunderstand me, God has given us pleasures but we are to be sober and not drunk with them.
7 For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.
Most people get snookered at night and we are not, as it was said, children of the night. I am a firm believer that nothing good happens after midnight but sleep. Young people, beware of your attraction to the night. The night is a cloak for all kinds of mischief that can wreck your lives. But, here it is about being alert for Christ’s coming to take us.
8 But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
Don’t be drunk with the world and don’t, please, keep mixing the world in with your worship. Something is not of Christ simply because you have taken a worldly attitude or action and slapped the name Christian on it.
In Isaiah 59:17 and Ephesians 6:14 the breastplate of righteousness is mentioned but here faith and love are used in the typology. Faith, love, and righteousness would guard your heart far better than simply outwardly showing separation and outwardly exhibiting a vain morality. Love in Paul’s letters is stressed as love for your brothers and sisters in Christ and love for Christ. Faith is something God gives you so that you can trust in Christ and believe that He has saved you.
The helmet of salvation is mentioned in the verse in Isaiah and in Ephesians 6:17. The hope of it is added here. We know we are saved not because we feel saved today or under this or that circumstance but because the Bible, the word of God, says we are saved. Unlike others we have no fear of losing our salvation. It is a hope, an expectation, an assurance that we have because we believe this Book.
9 For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
A comforting statement and very important. Again;
Matthew 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Luke 3:7 Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
1Thessalonians 1:10 And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.
Revelation 11:15 And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. 16 And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, 17 Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned. 18 And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.
Remember the part of Isaiah 61:2 that Jesus did not quote in Luke 4: “the day of vengeance of our God”?
God’s wrath will be visited on the nations of the earth; Germany, France, Russia, China, the United States, and all of them. We have and will be spared from that wrath. That doesn’t mean that things can’t get bad for us before they get better and it doesn’t tell us exactly when the church will be removed or if it is even going to happen in our lifetimes. Will there be millions of living Christian’s raptured, or like in Noah’s day, only eight left.
Part of Luke 18:8 says ………………..Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
By the way, when you read aloud a question in the Bible, please say it as a question. A great deal of thought and prayer went into this translation, as in regard to whether something was a question or not.
10 Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.
Again, both the living and the dead shall live together with Christ. The following verses give us hope. Keep in mind, Job was written before the Law given to Moses.
Job 33:19 ¶ He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain: 20 So that his life abhorreth bread, and his soul dainty meat. 21 His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen; and his bones that were not seen stick out. 22 Yea, his soul draweth near unto the grave, and his life to the destroyers. 23 If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness: 24 Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom. 25 His flesh shall be fresher than a child’s: he shall return to the days of his youth: 26 He shall pray unto God, and he will be favourable unto him: and he shall see his face with joy: for he will render unto man his righteousness. 27 He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; 28 He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light.
Isaiah 26:19 Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.
Job 19:26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: 27 Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.
11 ¶ Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.
One of the purposes of meeting as a church is to comfort each other with the assurance we have that we will go to be with Christ, either being alive or dead, as there is no such thing as soul sleep. Your soul, which has been cut from your flesh by an operation of God, as we saw in Colossians, will be with Christ upon death while your body will be redeemed upon His calling out of His church from the earth or it will go to Hell.
Another purpose of the church meeting is to help each other learn about God’s word and His ways. Edifying each other and comforting each other is an extremely important task, along with helping each other, these things being in a list behind the first reason for church, worshipping and glorifying God together.
Beware of taking that too far, though. The Roman Catholic says there is no Holy Spirit’s indwelling of the individual believer, they believe that the Holy Spirit is only present within the church organization. The Fundamentalist is not better, who believes that you can’t know or experience God apart from church services, sermons, and duties. The proper function of the church with regard to learning should be to comfort and to teach the individual believer how to experience God’s presence in their lives every day and to learn how He speaks to them from His words in the Bible so that they can be Christians, not just when they are busy about the organized business of the church body but when they are lying in their bed at 3am or at work or in their neighborhood or among their families, and I’m not talking about being a frightened, paranoid, self righteous, nut but about having joy, confidence, and peace in Christ.
If any person who has been a Christian for any length of time can’t pick up God’s word at any time, alone, and find something wonderful in it, that lifts them up, comforts them, and draws them closer to the Lord Jesus Christ as God then the church, as an organization, has failed. In the same regard that if any member of the church has nothing to eat, a warm and dry place to sleep, or clothes on their back the church has failed, so it is if a Christian is totally dependent after five, ten, twenty years of salvation on the church organization and the Pastor to feed them spiritually and is helpless on their own in their complete dependence on the organization of the church then the church is a hindrance to rather than a furtherance of their faith.
In other words, we come to worship, to comfort, and to edify. But, if this is the only time we act as Christians, then we need to stay home and read our Bibles and pray. We’re not getting it.
Think about it. When a young person, full of life, expectant about the future, looks at your life right now, do they see joy, peace, a yearning to know God? Or do they see a frightened, self righteous, hypocrite who is willfully ignorant of God’s word? How can such a person edify or comfort anyone when their own spirit is so twisted?
Let us come together to worship God, to comfort, and edify each other, and to be equipped to go out into the world as ambassadors for Christ.
12 And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; 13 And to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake. And be at peace among yourselves.
There are several things of importance here. Lastly, we can’t function as a church if there is no peace among us, in particular. Let petty rivalries, jealousies, and envying stay outside of this assembly. Firstly, we are to honor those that do the work among us, the Pastor for instance. We need to help him as we can and are able, to encourage him, and when we get to the point where we can, pay him and his associates some kind of salary. Visiting evangelists and preachers should also be well provided for as they do their work. Appreciating the work of the Pastor is very important even if we are unable to pay a living salary to him or his staff.
In situations like ours, encouragement and appreciation can be very important to keeping a Pastor prepared for the ministry and to show our esteem.
14 Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men.
These important instructions to the church would be good for you to memorize. There are four things here that are very important, here in this verse. Those among us whose lives are getting out of control and must be warned. You can see it in the person you know getting wrapped up in the world or their flesh. Perhaps, someone is walking a little close to adultery or heresy.
Then, there are those who just aren’t mentally all there, either through lifelong physical infirmity or a disease like Alzheimer’s. They need to be comforted and helped by the rest of us.
There are those who have a hard time caring for themselves, possibly through age or circumstance of life. They need our support and we are called to support them.
Be patient. Don’t expect other Christians to understand what you do about the Bible. Don’t insist that someone who is where you were twenty years ago to suddenly make the leap forward that you were unable to make in the blink of an eye. Be patient with the atheist, the nominal Christian, the agnostic, because they are blind. They need to see the reality of Christ by YOUR LIFE. Your arguing will not win anyone over if they can’t see Christ in you. Be patient. They are the ones with a short time. You have eternal life. Be patient with your brothers and sisters. All of us get wrapped up in the world and in our flesh at times. Be patient. Be patient with young people. You yourselves stumbled blindly with the arrogance of youth at one time. Bring them along, as we say in Boxing. Work with them. Be patient.
15 See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men.
Romans 12:19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
Matthew 5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
Notice how this command starts out with our relations with our brothers and sisters and then to all men, which includes the unsaved. To obey this requires a great deal of faith and a close fellowship with Jesus Christ. Believers in other lands have to deal with this often, even watching loved ones murdered and not being willing to take earthly revenge. Think about it. How obedient can you be in not paying evil for evil done to you?
What western culture teaches is what Captain Ahab said to Moby Dick in the novel of the same name and famously quoted by a Star Trek villain, “Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.”
Fallen man loves vengeance. Our laws are written to take vengeance out of the individual’s hands lest we live in a world of vendetta’s and bloodshed. If you kill a man, it is considered to be a crime against the state and is punished as such, just as when a sin is committed it is a sin against God.
Follow that which is good. Think on good things. Put vengeance out of your mind. This is tough, as I said, and I doubt many Christians have the guts or the faith for it.
16 ¶ Rejoice evermore.
There are so many blessings awaiting you now and in the hereafter why shouldn’t you rejoice? Joy and rejoicing are prime subjects of Paul’s letters to the Christians. Notice how joy and rejoicing played such a huge part in Philippians, as we have already discussed.
Joy was the one thing I was without until God opened my mind up to his Bible. If you don’t have joy as a Christian, and many don’t, it’s directly proportional to how much you let God speak to you through His words in this Book. Do you give God the opportunity to speak to your heart and to your spirit through this Book? If so, how often? You’ll find that if you have no joy then you are shutting the God who made you out. Oh, you might be busy about “church business” and you might hand out tracts and you might live the “separated” life but you’re miserable and unhappy because God, the Lord Jesus Christ, has so little a direct part in that life.
God speaks to you through His word. He answers you through His word. What is the problem with you not wanting to know how to understand what He’s saying? Why are you so stubborn that you don’t want to read or hear what He has to say? Are you that controlled by Satan that you don’t care what God has to say about anything? I’m not talking about what I or someone else says that God says but about what He says IN THIS BOOK?
Joy is yours if you want it. Just open the Book and start reading and put away the “How the Christian girl met the Christian boy” romances and the Christian athlete sports book and let God speak to you. Joy will come, I guarantee it. Try reading Psalms or Ephesians and praying over it at the same time. It’s amazing.
17 Pray without ceasing.
The Christian is always to be in a prayerful state, ready to praise, confess, be thankful, and to ask for mercy at all times.
Psalm 5:3 My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.
Psalm 55:17 Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice.
Notice how the attitude toward prayer that the Christian is given is more profound that that under the Law in Psalms. We don’t have a scheduled time to pray but at any time we should be prepared to pray, to preach the word of God, and, of course, to die. But, prayer is essential and God responds to it if you are listening to Him through His word. I’m not sure how many Christian prayers go unanswered because we refuse to hear Him.
18 In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
If you go back through Paul’s letters you find two recurrent themes, among others. You find an expression of joy and the importance of giving thanks. An unthankful heart is the beginning of pride and a great many sins. In everything, we are to give thanks to God. This verse should be read again and again and memorized. Be thankful in all things.
19 Quench not the Spirit.
How can you quench the Spirit? By willful sin, failing to let God speak to you through His word, refusing to speak on His behalf, not being willing to lead others to Him, staying away from your fellow Christians, and from worldliness and idolatry. Covetousness, a lust for things and money and also engaging in worldly amusements. How much TV do you watch as compared to your reading and hearing God’s word? This is a command. Don’t quench it.
Another way you can quench the Spirit is to focus on yourself constantly; your suffering, your works, and your own interpretation of how you think church should be carried out.
20 Despise not prophesyings.
Don’t take lightly the preaching you hear and the talk of yours and the world’s future from the word of God. To despise is to hold in low regard or to esteem lightly. Look forward to hearing the word of God preached. Think on what the Pastor has said and discuss it after services with your family, particularly quizzing the children, as one reformer insisted parents do. Here is an example of an early Baptist church service in the 1600’s. There was no Sunday School or nursery.
I’m taking this from Baptisthistory.org;
“Baptist styles of worship have changed considerably since 1609. The early Baptist services were quite long, sometimes with several sermons, and in the early days there was no music or singing. The oldest record of a Baptist worship service is from 1609, in a letter from Hughe and Anne Bromhead, who said:
The order of the worshippe and government of oure church is . 1. we begynne wth A prayer, after reade some one or tow chapters of the Bible gyve the sence thereof, and conferr vpon the same, that done we lay aside oure bookes, and after a solemne prayer made by the .1. speaker, he propoundeth some text owt of the Scripture, and prophecieth owt of the same, by the space of one hower, or thre Quarters of an hower.
"This Morning exercise," the Bromhead letter concludes, "begynes at eight of the clocke and continueth vnto twelve of the clocke the like course of exercise is observed in the afternowne from .2. of the clock vnto .5. or .6. of the Clocke."
The earliest Baptist worship was lengthy and dealt primarily with Bible exposition. There was no singing, and Baptists put great value upon spontaneity and audience participation.”
Paul tells us not to hold the exposition of and the prophesying from the Scriptures, in low regard.
21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
Modern day Christians will hold everything that has some mention of God in it in a favorable way without checking it out Biblically. If a politician mentions God or family values he or she is our man or woman. If a “praise” song mentions Jesus, we’re there. If a movie is made by someone who claims to be a Christian regardless of what heresies he recommends we will support him. We have an us and them mentality. Of course, the problem is that among US there are a great many of Satan’s counterfeits.
A praise song is no good if its doctrinally twisted and keeps you from singing or hearing a real hymn that is true and Biblical. A movie that keeps you from reading or discussing the Bible is worthless no matter what Christians are in the lead role or how little they say bad words or show flesh. A politician is not a Christian if he doesn’t acknowledge the authority of Jesus Christ in his or her life.
Prove all things. Test them. Check them out. Prove is shown to be the same as testing in the following verses;
Exodus 16:4 Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no.
Exodus 20:20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.
Deuteronomy 8:2 And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.
Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
2Corinthians 8:8 I speak not by commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of others, and to prove the sincerity of your love.
2Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
Galatians 6:4 But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.
The only things that are truly good are those that come from God. If it is not of God, it is not good, no matter how good it feels physically or mentally.
Mark 10:18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.
22 Abstain from all appearance of evil.
This is so simple but can be the subject of many, many sermons. If it could look bad, even if I have the right to do it and I know I would never be guilty of any wrongdoing, don’t. One example would be a preacher counseling a woman other than his wife privately, behind closed doors. More men of God have fallen because of something they didn’t see any problem with, at first, than for any other reason.
Another way of looking at this has to do with the Biblical definition of evil which is malice, malicious, disaster, calamity, etc. etc. and just bad things.
Genesis 37:20 Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
Note that the contrasts in this verse are the opposites of light and darkness, peace and evil. So that evil is the opposite of peace, such as violent behavior and words are the opposite of peace. In context evil would be calamity, disaster, and catastrophe.
Matthew 6:34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
So, one way of looking at verse 22 is to say that we should avoid anything that has the appearance of being hateful, malicious, mean spirited, or intending harm to anyone. That’s not our place.
There are enough contrasts in the Bible to show that God hates violent men and regards man’s propensity to maliciousness toward his fellow man as pure evil. That is our heritage from Adam and Eve’s encounter with Satan in the form of a serpent.
Psalm 11:5 The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.
Let’s look at some things that are evil.
Violence is evil.
Psalm 140:1 To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. Deliver me, O LORD, from the evil man: preserve me from the violent man;
Psalm 11:5 The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.
Proverbs 1:16 For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.
Proverbs 3:29 Devise not evil against thy neighbour, seeing he dwelleth securely by thee.
Isaiah 59:7 Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.
Jonah 3:8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
Malicious, mean spirited speech is evil.
Ephesians 4:31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
1Peter 2:1 Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings,
Disobedience to God is evil.
Proverb 17:11 An evil man seeketh only rebellion: therefore a cruel messenger shall be sent against him.
Isaiah 65:12 Therefore will I number you to the sword, and ye shall all bow down to the slaughter: because when I called, ye did not answer; when I spake, ye did not hear; but did evil before mine eyes, and did choose that wherein I delighted not.
Isaiah 66:4 I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.
Sin is evil.
Deuteronomy 22:22 If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel.
1Kings 15:26 And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, and walked in the way of his father, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin.
But, remember that evil is not necessarily sin. God can cause evil; destruction, calamity, and disaster to befall anyone. God does not sin.
Jeremiah 36:3 It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.
Psalm 34:14 Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.
Proverbs 12:20 Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil: but to the counsellors of peace is joy.
Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
But don’t American Christians love violence? Oh, yes, we do. We can’t deny it. In our sports, in our politics, in our foreign relations, and even in our families. Not just the clenched fist but verbal violence, the abuse that comes out of our mouths. Paul admonishes us to abstain from all appearance of having a twisted, malicious heart.
23 ¶ And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Here, the three components of our existence; spirit, soul, and body are listed. God, as well, is composed of a three part being. Its just that God’s different parts can function independently while if one of yours is separated from the others, you die. Here are verses that establish the Trinity, or three part God.
Matthew 28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
2 Corinthians 13:14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.
1John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
Paul prays that God will preserve us blameless to Christ’s return.

24 Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.
And Christ is able and willing to preserve us. We Baptists believe in eternal security. There are certain similar promises made like this one. Remember in Ephesians that we are sealed.
Ephesians 1:13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,
Ephesians 4:30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
God promises some wonderful things.
1John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
One note on sin. Try to focus on Biblical sins against God and not cultural sins. Focusing on trying to be free of what really amounts to nothing takes your mind off the true sins that God wants you to put away.
Anyway, God is faithful and loving. We merely need to look to Him as the provider of all things and one who is willing to forgive us. Christ can preserve us and will preserves us blameless until the last day because we look to His righteousness, not our own, for our salvation.
Matthew 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
25 Brethren, pray for us. 26 Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss.
There are none of us who don’t need prayer, particularly anyone preaching or teaching, but all of us. The holy kiss isn’t something that Christians do now. I assume it had to do with being the kind of chaste greeting you find in Eastern countries today.

27 I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren.
Reading chapters of the Bible was a part of Baptist church services a long time ago. With the introduction of the lexicons and commentaries by scholars it has fallen out of favor. The Authorized Version was to be read in the churches, if you read the front page of the older copies.
28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. The first epistle to the Thessalonians was written from Athens.
Here is the true title of Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ. The last sentence is not considered inspired but was the traditional notice written after this letter.

Latest Reading

Culture of Corruption; Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies, by Michelle Malkin, Regnery Publishing, 2009. Its a pretty good read. But, what impressed me is the similiarity between Obama's crowd and the gang that came to Washington with Reagan, many of which, if you recall went down in flames. Its worth reading, but only if you like gossip about political hacks. Can we say President Harding here? President Grant? Of course, it remains to be seen if this bunch will embarass him.

World History, Chapter Eight, revised

Meanwhile, in other news; Imperial China to Peru, India to Nubia
The Beginning of Christianity and the Second Diaspora

“And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;”
Acts 17:26

“When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.”
Deuteronomy 32:8

“34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: 35 But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.”
Acts 10:34,35

Briefly, let us discuss the Feudal Age of China. This period is said to have lasted from 770BC to 255BC, according to Durant’s work, “Our Oriental Heritage” from his series “The Story of Civilization”. During this time we have several persons of importance to note. The first one is named Kuang Chung, the prime minister of Ts’i. He was the organizing genius of this most important of the original 55 provinces of China, consisting of a type of city-state as in Canaan and Greece with a walled town and farmland and small walled villages or suburbs, as recorded in the Bible, surrounding it. Kuang Chung or simply Kuang replaced bronze tools with iron and established a government monopoly or control of iron and salt. He taxed money, fish, and salt. As the advisor to Duke Huan, not the political leader himself but much like Joseph, the second in command, he made his little country a well ordered state which became the basis for Chinese government. He was applauded later by Confucius for giving order to the state. He served from 683BC to 640BC.

There was a great struggle in China between those who believed that the proper order of society was best served by following local customs and practices thought to have come from above and those who wanted the state to codify laws issued by state. The legal codes, which were usually beneficial to the aristocracy, came into being in the duchies or provinces of Cheng and Chin about 535BC and 512BC respectively. Custom and law found a compromise and this resulted in the Chou-Li. This Law of Chou set for two thousand years the Chinese government with an emperor ruling as the vicar and “Son of Heaven” and, as Durant says, “holding power through the possession of virtue and piety; an aristocracy, partly of birth and partly of training, administering the offices of the state; a people dutifully tilling the soil, living in patriarchal (father or elder brother governed) families, enjoying civil rights but having no voice in public affairs; and a cabinet of six ministries controlling respectively the life and activities of the emperor, the welfare and



124

early marriage of the people, the ceremonies and divinations of religion, the preparation and prosecution of war, the administration of justice, and the organization of public works.” You will note that in China, as well as elsewhere, the union of church and state, of religion and government, is complete from the start and there is little discussion of freedom of conscience, freedom of association, or freedom of religion.

From about 604BC to 517BC we have Lao-tze. The dates, of course, are questionable but widely accepted as being reasonably accurate. He ran the Royal Library of Chou, according to historian, Szuma Ch’en, and disgusted with politicians was determined to go live in seclusion. When requested, since he was going into retirement, to write a book, he consented to write a book in two parts; one called Tao and one called Te. Lao-tze was his title, The Old Master, and it is said that his real name was Li, meaning; the Plum. The book is now known as the Tao Te Ching or Book of the Way and of Virtue. It is the primary book of the religion known as Taoism. In Taoism one must follow the path of nature. The Tao, like Einstein’s god, is an impersonal force that operates the universe. Like Allah, it doesn’t love its adherents and like Brahma, it is unknowable. In fact, in Taoism, knowledge is not virtue, in fact, it is a problem, for it leads to trouble and sorrow. But, King Solomon already had that figured out hundreds of years before the Tao Te Ching, which many Chinese scholars say was not written by Lao-tze but was written before he was born.

“For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” Ecclesiastes 1:18

Lao-tze believed, among other things, that the worst possible leader of a state would be a philosopher.

From about 551 to 478BC we have Confucius or K’ung-fu-tze, meaning K’ung the Master. Born in Shantung province, he was China’s most famous philosopher. His work remains today in The Analects of Confucius. He, like all other deluded and deceived leaders of philosophy and religion denied the Bible’s one path to God without even ever seeing a Bible perhaps. A famous statement of his was, “all the rivers of righteousness flow into the lake of heaven”. He would fit right in with today’s universal religionists. According to legend, Confucius began his career as a teacher at age 22 teaching out of his home charging whatever modest fee his pupils could pay. Like the ancient Greeks, the Chinese were always looking to learn something new.

“(For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.) “ Acts 17:21

Like the Greek philosopher, Socrates, whom we did not mention in our class on Greece, he taught by asking questions. Socrates wrote nothing down and we are dependent upon his student, Plato, for most of our information on him. Both Confucius


125

and Socrates taught in this fashion, asking pointed questions of their students, supposedly to lead them closer to the truth. Socrates was finally condemned by an Athenian court and sentenced to drink poison for his disturbances. Confucius, on the other hand went on to hold several offices for the Duke of Lu and legend has it that he was so wise that when he was Minister of Public Works, everything went smoothly, and when he was Minister of Crime, crime disappeared. Resigning his position eventually over his disapproval of his employer’s worldliness and lack of virtue, he wandered homeless for many years with a few faithful disciples. He wrote on many topics regarding everything from good government to the proper family life and set the example for Chinese philosophy and ideal government as well as personal virtue and home life for over 2.000 years.

Confucius also left behind five books known as Five Ching by the Chinese. To this they added four books or Shu of the philosophers and this became known as The Nine Classics. Confucius was an agnostic, a term coined by Thomas Huxley, Charles Darwin’s biggest supporter. Basically, it means that the person doesn’t profess to believe in God or not to believe in God as he simply doesn’t know. I would say to you that an agnostic is an atheist who is too afraid to admit it just in case God is listening. Confucius’ greatest passion was for morality, not religion.

The period of time from 403BC to 221BC is known as the Period of Contending States in China, a time of chaos, disorganization, and much war. The man who unified China was known as Shih Huang-ti or Ch’in Shih Huang-Ti from the dynasty, Chin, from which we get the name for the country. He was the illegitimate son of the Queen of Ch’in and a minister named Lu. Shih forced his father to commit suicide and persecuted his mother, assuming the throne at the age of 12, according to historian Szuma Ch’en. When he was 25 he began to conquer the petty states into which China was divided. In 230BC he conquered Han; in 228BC, Chao; in 225, Wei; in 223, Ch’u; in 222, Yen, and then the important state of Ch’i in 221BC. China was finally under one rule.

He then pieced together many walls on the northern frontier designed to protect China from barbarian attack, thus creating the 1500 mile long Great Wall. This is the largest structure ever built by mankind. Although this wall did not keep out barbarians it did slow them down. Durant says that it slowed the Hun attack down so much that they chose to attack to the west and he goes on to say that Rome fell because China built a wall. An 8th century Arab chronicle is reported to have called the wall, ‘The Ramparts of Magog’. Remember that when you read Ezekiel and Revelation about the end times. He moved China away from rule by custom to rule strictly by law and a strong central government. He destroyed the power of local warlords or feudal barons and replaced them with a nobility of civil servants placed in each province. He, in other words, gave an order and a structure to Chinese government and therefore society that it had not had. He was, however, the enemy of scholars and particularly hated Confucian scholars, ordering all copies of Confucius’ books burnt. The scholars saw that under one supreme government they would not have the freedom of thought and liberty of conscience that they had when


126

things were more disordered. It is an historical fact that as power is concentrated into the hands of a very few and then perhaps one, individual freedom is set aside. The emperor
burnt many books of philosophy and consigned those who hid those books to forced labor on the Great Wall where most died.

Shih Huang-Ti spent his final years paranoid and trying to find an elixir for immortality. He was buried in a tomb with several hundred young girls who were buried alive to keep him company in eternity, behind hidden traps to kill intruders, and even the workmen were killed to keep the secrets of his tomb from the world. Chaos again reigned at his death.

The Han dynasty followed after Wen Ti restored order. He permitted freedom of speech and writing once again. Also, he permitted criticism of the government which had been outlawed by the previous emperor. The Han ruled China for 400 years and the Chinese who claim to trace their roots to this dynasty are proud to call themselves Han Chinese today to separate themselves from what they consider to be inferior Chinese. The greatest of the Han emperors was Wu Ti, who reigned over a half a century, from 140BC to 87BC. He successfully fought barbarians and made China master over Korea, Manchuria, Annam (a kingdom in Central Vietnam), Indo-China (loosely defined, the area of current day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), and Turkestan in central Asia.

Wu Ti would be considered today a socialist as he established national ownership of China’s natural resources to prevent private monopolies and wealth gained from manipulation of these resources by private individuals. Even the production and sale of alcoholic beverages was a state run industry. He nationalized export and trade and tried to stabilize the way prices were established. The system flourished for a time and trade grew as he ruled from his capital at Lo-yang. Scholarship and poetry abounded and pottery was beautiful, Szuma Ch’en tells us through Will Durant. The imperial library had nearly 10,000 books and no one came to public office without passing the national examinations, which were open to all. China had never been so prosperous.

Natural disasters such as great floods and droughts ruined his price fixing scheme making food and clothing in such short supply that prices skyrocketed. Businessmen complained that state control had destroyed competition and incentives to produce anything for sale. After the death of the emperor, court intrigue, corruption, and exploitation of the mass of people by unethical businessmen and politicians became the norm until a new reformer arose named Wang Mang in 5AD.

Japanese origins are lost, like many others. A primitive strain of Japheth (Caucasian) entered the islands and they were followed by a Shemitic strain coming from Korea (or Hamitic depending upon which Bible scholar you read as some claim a descent from Shem for the Asian races while others insist upon Ham as their progenitor). The Mongol strain coming in from the north was added to a darker Malay and Indonesian group from


127

the south. This unique mixture resulted in a unique culture, language, and appearance.

The Chinese dismissed the Japanese as “dwarf people” in the 4th century and had little
respect for their early culture. Contrast this Chinese report with the urbane, sophisticated Japanese corporate culture we know today; “they have neither oxen nor wild beasts, they
tattoo their faces in pattern varying with their rank; they wear garments woven in one piece; they have spears, bow and arrows tipped with stone or iron. They wear no shoes, are law abiding and polygamous (have multiple wives), addicted to strong drink and long lived…The women smear their bodies with pink and scarlet paint…..There is no theft and litigation is infrequent”. (This comes from H.H. Gowen’s ‘Outline History of Japan’ as reported in Durant’s ‘Our Oriental Heritage’). We will have much more to report on Japan later. The Yayoi culture in Japan, around 300BC, introduced rice farming, according to some sources. The Kofun period then marked the rise of strong military clans. The Japanese did not even start writing their own histories until the 5th and 6th centuries after Christ (AD or anno domini, ‘the year of our Lord’). According to Japanese mythology the 3,000 island culture was founded by the Emperor Jimmu in the 7th century BC, a descendant of the god, Ameratsu, daughter of Izanagi. She became the ruler of the High Celestial Plain, called Takamagahara. While commonly thought of as female other Japanese works, such as the Hotsuma Tsutae regard her as a he. I refer you to the Ancient Near Eastern concept of a he/she-god/goddess who is, as Madame Blavatsky would have put it, the same god, Lucifer, the celestial virgin, at once, god and goddess, Satan and Ishtar, so predominant in so many forms throughout human history.

To quote one pagan website from the 21st century, this understanding of the identity of female deities from other cultures with the Babylonian Ishtar is well known. I am quoting a website called ‘The Divine Feminine’;

“From Ameratsu and Cannon in Japan, to Quanyin in China, to Tara in Tibet, to Shakti in India, to Akua'ba in Africa, to Isis in Egypt, to Ishtar and Astarte in the Middle East, to Demeter, Aphrodite and Venus in Greece and Rome, to the Great Goddess of Willendorf and Laussel, to Freya in Scandinavia, to Spider Woman and Ixchel the Weaver in North America, the Divine Mother has a long tradition in the history of the planet's consciousness.”

Across the Pacific Ocean in Peru, from about 850BC to 300BC we have the Chavin period as termed by archaeologists. It is also known as the middle formative period and is characterized by its pottery which still has its effects seen today in pottery of indigenous (native) cultures around the area. This culture, according to archaeologists, mysteriously disappeared, which means they can’t find evidence that fits their theories, and from this perspective nothing much of significance happened for another 500 years. This period represents the earliest culture in Peru and shows the beginnings of basket weaving, textiles, and other industry that shows the people were doing things other than merely trying to survive from day to day. The Andes Mountains are the primary geological


128

feature of Peru and the Andean terrain is a very difficult one in which to survive. The next significant period in Peru’s history doesn’t start until about 100AD.

While there is no written history of BC North America, there are many archaeological designations for cultures that have been uncovered there. One of the most interesting is the Adena culture of Ohio. They lived in villages and by hunting and gathering, as well as
fishing from about 500BC to 100BC, according to archaeologists, but most of what we know about them comes from studying the mounds they left behind. Adena artifacts have been found from New York, to Pennsylvania, to Southern Illinois. Their mounds started out as simple burial sites but were probably used for other religious purposes as well as most of the common people appear to have been cremated. One of the most interesting thing about the Adena people was their unusually large size and strong or robust frames. All of them, men and women, appear to have been over six feet tall, which is very strange for that time. The most famous of the mounds is the Great Serpent mound featuring a serpent swallowing a round object like the sun, which archaeologists tell us was related to one of their myths.

The Hopewell culture of the Eastern woodlands is another culture of interest. It lasted from 200BC to 400AD, we are told. They were supposedly the first fully committed farmers or what scholars call agriculturalists. As with the Adena, they are distinguished by their massive burial mounds.

There are many people who contend that travelers from the Old World or Europe, Africa, and the Near East sailed by sea to the various locations of communities in the New World, the Americas. One such book about the possible interaction between populations is called America BC by Barry Fell. The problem with scholars who do not accept the Bible narrative is that they cannot understand how cultures around the world can be so different and yet have such fundamental similarities because they can’t see the common origin of human society in the pre-flood culture passed on through Noah’s sons. In any event, the oldest human remains found in North America, called Kennewick Man, dated by conventional scholars at 9,000BC, are Caucasian not Amerindian.

We have previously mentioned the Olmecs of the East Mexican lowlands in Central America. Their culture lasted from about 1300BC to 400BC and this culture is often referred to as the mother of Middle American cultures. They are known for leaving behind statues of colossal, deformed heads. Some researchers say they came from Asia and some from Africa. It is likely that they were part of that slow migration from the Ancient Near East through western Asia to Eastern Asia and across what was thought to be the land bridge that is now the Bering Straits separating Alaska from eastern Asia. But, it is also possible that they came by sea from across the Atlantic. They had an advanced calendar and their writing is similar to that of certain West African tribes.




129

When Mayan hieroglyphs were examined it was found that they resembled North African and Near Eastern glyphs.

The Mayan culture lasted from 500BC to around 1200AD scholars tell us. The Mayans are in the news today because of the great tragedy of many of their villages becoming mass graves due to the impact of Hurricane Stan in 2005. These people have had a long
and tragic history, carving out an advanced civilization in the jungles of Central America and then declining into the poor and often remote subsistence farmers we know today. They are also famous for their advanced calendar consisting of cycles that end mysteriously in 2012. Many end time prophecy buffs insist that this means something about the end of history; however, could it not also mean that that was as far as they
could mathematically project with their system? Still, a study of the Mayan Calendar, the year, 2012, and end time prophecy buffs can be very interesting as long as we remember the Biblical admonition that we cannot know the exact date of either the Rapture or the second advent of Christ. In addition, Mayan pyramids, while not as famous as pyramids from Egypt and the Far East, are very impressive. The high point of the Mayan civilization comes later than the focus of this particular session so we will save information about them for later unless you do your own study of their culture from beginning to end for your class assignment.

Moving to India we find that from 599BC to 527BC we are told that Mahavira, the founder of the Indian religion known as Jainism lived. His parents believed that the rebirth of Hinduism was a curse and the religious sect they belonged to valued suicide. When Mahavira reached the age of 31, his parents did just that by starving themselves to death. Distraught over his parents’ suicide he renounced the world and wandered for 13 years, finally being declared a Jina or conqueror by his disciples who followed him. The Jina, like Alice Bailey’s new age doctrine, The Coming One, was someone who regularly came throughout history to enlighten the world in some way. Mahavira’s followers called themselves Jains and before he died at the age of 72 they had created a celibate (stayed single and did not marry) clergy and an order of nuns.

Jainism started out logically according to modern thought, that there is no absolute truth in that all truth is relative to someone’s opinion. What is true to me might not be true to you. Absolute truth only came to those rare Jinas who came to teach mankind. They went on to deny the existence of God because it was just as hard for them to accept a creator without a beginning as it was for them to accept that things never had a beginning. They believed in the eternal pre-existence of the universe, much like the Greek Aristotle and many modern scientists who look to the Big Bang’s singularity as being eternal. But, it wasn’t long before the Jains, after emptying heaven of God, began to people it with deified saints of Jain legend. These were worshipped as gods with great devotion and ceremony. They even believed that stone and metal had souls. If one achieved a sinless life he or she became a supreme soul and was spared reincarnation. In other words, like many other manmade and Satan inspired religions and science they simply made it up as they went along. The road to this supreme state of being was by

130

complete ahimsa or abstinence from injury to any living thing, even an insect. Suicide, though, is approved of as the only killing permitted is the killing of oneself. Eventually, they split into different sects with varying beliefs but in a land where life can be so hard and so short, they have always had a following.

From 563 to 483BC we have the life of Buddha. The religion named after him has found a great many adherents in the Far East but also a great many followers in the west, particularly since the late 1800’s when Buddhism became more known to England due to England’s rule over India. Buddha was born into a wealthy family, was married, and was living a happy, prosperous life when he saw suffering and it had a great affect on him. He realized that traditional Hindu philosophy didn’t answer the questions these scenes of
sickness and poverty laid on him so he began to pursue an introspective search for truth. He left his wife and newborn son and became an ascetic or one who renounces possessions and comfort, living in the desert. When he leaves, legend tells us that Mara, prince of evil, tries to tempt him but he refused and rode on not looking back.

Eventually, Buddha reached a state of enlightenment, according to that religion’s traditions, after sitting for a long time under the Bodhi-tree. He came to the conclusion that birth is the beginning of all evil and that if a man could live a life of perfect justice, unvarying patience, and kindness to all, he could avoid being reborn. The ultimate goal of Buddhism is Nirvana, where all cravings and desires have ended and the mind and soul have merged with unconscious infinity losing all personality and self-awareness. This God denying and Bible rejecting religion is believed in a sort of hybrid way with many pagan beliefs in the modern New Age movement.

Alexander the Great of Macedon, the Greek general, conquered Persia entering India in 327BC, by Durant’s reckoning. Early in 326BC he crossed the Indus River and began a three year campaign that resulted in his claiming western India as a tributary of Macedon. Among other things he brought knowledge of a Greek combat sport called Pankration, or
“all powers” similar to the brutal combat sports one can see on television today. This became the Indian fighting arts of Kalaripayat and Vrajmushti which were later taken into China by the monk, Daruma, and became Kung Fu and other Shaolin arts. It finally reached Japan by way of Okinawa and changed into the many forms of Karate we know today.

It only took about 7 years for Macedonian authority to be removed from India by the great Indian ruler, Chandragupta. He was a young noble of the Kshatriya or warrior clan. Chandragupta organized a small army and overthrew the Macedonian garrison left to rule India and freed the natives from the Greek bondage. He then conquered what was called Hindustan and Afghanistan, creating the Mauryan Dynasty that ruled for over a century.

The ruler, Ashoka, a successor to Chandragupta, was known as the philosopher-king. He ruled Afghanistan and all of India except for the very remote southern portion called Tamilakam, or Tamil Land beginning in 273BC. He was a cruel ruler and the Chinese

131

related how a prison he kept in Northern India was still known even 900 years later as “Ashoka’s Hell”. Eventually, he had a religious conversion and abandoned his cruelty, demolished his prison, and began to rule like some sage or philosopher, calling his citizens, his children.

The so-called Golden Age of India, from the death of Ashoka until the Gupta Dynasty, a period of about 600 years, was characterized by great universities, Persian and Greek influence in art and architecture, and a flourishing civilization although very little written contemporary records have been found. Greeks and Syrians did conquer the area known as Punjab and established a Greco-Bactrian culture there. The Kushans, related to Turkish people, conquered what is now called Afghanistan. Their greatest king, Kanishka, ruled a kingdom producing magnificent architecture at Peshawar, Taxila, and Mathura which was a combination of Greek and Buddhist. He permitted religious freedom but himself worked toward the spread of Buddhism.

Now, to Africa where bordered by the first cataract of the Nile and the 6th cataract there was the country of Nubia. A cataract is a large waterfall. It extended then from around the Nile town of Elephantine southward to just above Khartoum, Sudan. Through much of history it was dominated by Egypt but when internal troubles kept Egypt within its borders Nubia flourished. Modern people in Southern Egypt and the Sudan still refer to themselves as Nubian and even speak Nubian.
By 800 B.C., Egypt had fragmented into rival states. In 747 B.C., the city of Thebes in southern Egypt was threatened by northerners, and the Egyptians called upon the Nubian king for protection. The Kushite king, Piye, marched north from his capital at Napata, rescued Thebes and reunified Egypt. For the next 100 years, Kushite kings ruled both Nubia and Egypt. This era was brought to a close by the invasion of Assyrian armies in 663 B.C., and the Nubian king fled south to his capital at Napata.
By 200 B.C., the capital had shifted yet farther south to Meroe, where the kings continued to be buried in pyramid tombs and to build temples to Nubian and Egyptian gods in a hybrid Egyptian Roman-African style. Roman historians record the skirmishes and treaties which marked the relation ship of Roman Egypt and Nubia.
Meroe had existed as the capital of Cush since the 4th century. It is possible that the kingdoms of Cush and Nubia were one and the same as there seems to be some confusion among historians as to whether there is a distinct identity for each. Cush/Nubia was one of the oldest, if not the oldest kingdom of the Nile River. Cush was the name of one of the sons of Ham, brother to the founder of Egypt, Mizraim. Although Meroe was an important city in ancient times it was mentioned, but not visited by, Herodotus. The only things that remain today are ruins of temples and many pyramids.
In the Ethiopian highlands bordering the Red Sea was the kingdom of Axum from about 500BC. This was a fabulously wealthy trading center for Africa, India, and the

132
Near East. Historians believe that the Axumites were a mixture of Cushites and Arabians. You will find Axum also spelled Aksum.
As there is little, if any, evidence of advanced civilization in sub-Saharan Africa, at this time, it is most likely that the movement of people into the jungles of Africa was a slow process due to the diseases of such a hostile environment. But, many legends state that King Solomon had mines in central Africa and, of course, we have the account in the Bible of his ships bringing gold and apes and peacocks in 1 Kings 10:22 and 2 Chronicles 9:21. In Northern Africa we have many tribal peoples living along the shores of the Mediterranean, one of the most noteworthy are the Libyans also called Cyrenians.
Although populations had long been moving into the South Pacific islands, there was still not established civilization there at the time of this time of study. Some historians even state that the Maori didn’t enter New Zealand until 1000AD or thereabouts so there is little to mention other than archaeological classifications of primitive hunters, fishers, and primitive farmers.
Let’s move to the Middle East with the revolt by the Maccabees, Jewish rebels who overthrew one of the successors to Alexander’s empire, Antiochus IV. The Jews had fully established their independence by 143BC. The Seleucid Empire was named after one of Alexander’s generals, Seleucus, who established his own empire from Babylon in 312BC. In the time between the Old and the New Testament, this empire slowly waned until the Roman leader, Pompey, made what was left of the Seleucid Empire the Roman province of Syria in 63BC. Egypt, which had been ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty of the descendants of Alexander’s general, Ptolemy, also became an Roman tributary. Its most famous ruler, Cleopatra IV, has been the subject of many works of fiction as the seductress who knew Julius Caesar.
“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” Luke 2:1

“Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene,” Luke 3:1

Who was Caesar is the question that starts our study of Christianity’s beginnings? Who was the ruler of the empire that provided a contradictorily safe and yet perilous environment for the faith to grow and yet was the legal authority under which our Lord was executed?

Caius Julius Caesar, according to Durant in his 3rd book in the series ‘The Story of Civilization’ called ‘Caesar and Christ’, traced his pedigree to Iulus Ascanius, son of Aeneas who had escaped from Troy, son of Venus or Ishtar, who may be the feminine counterpart to Satan, as we have previously discussed. If you remember, some early gods

133

were possessed of feminine and masculine identities. In any event, Caesar, a person’s name, is the name from which words for leaders like the Tsar or Czar of Russia were derived. He personally believed that his ancestry began with Jupiter, Venus’ father, the Roman derivation of the name, Zeus, whom I have stated is the same god as Odin in Norse mythology, Viracocha in Peru, Quetzlcoatl in Mexico, and many others but also
Baal in Canaan, Bel in Babylon (according to Herodotus) and as per the words of Christ Himself, Baal is Satan. Of course, we don’t know if he truly believed this claim or if it was, as Plato had said of his own leaders, a political ploy to claim legitimacy by descent from the gods themselves.

Theodore Ayrault Dodge, in his book, “Caesar”, states that Caesar came from an old patrician family that had moved to Rome from Alba under the reign of Tullus Hostilius and had held many public positions through the years. His father, a public official, had died when he was about sixteen. His mother, Aurelia, was of plebeian origin but was a woman of fine character. Caesar was very, very proud of his ancestry and brought it up quite frequently, particularly at a famous funeral oration for his aunt.

Aurelia devoted her life to her son’s education which Dodge claims was the foundation of his success. Michael Grant, in his work entitled “The Twelve Caesars” quotes a more ancient work by Roman biographer Suetonius who wrote “Lives of the Caesars”, when he tells us how Caesar’s aunt was the wife of the great general Marius and that Caesar himself married the daughter of Marius’ successor Cinna. We are told that his first great success was his appointment as Chief Priest or Pontifex Maximus, a title the Pope, head of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church, is known by today. This was in 63BC. Three years later he was snubbed for his bid to be the governor of Spain and he formed
an alliance with the Roman general and political leader, Pompey, and the wealthy Crassus. In 59 he became Consul in a ruthless power drive. Then, between 58 and 51 he conquered the whole of central and northern Gaul as far as the Rhine River, which he briefly crossed. In 55 and 54 he entered Britain unsuccessfully and left us a vivid description of the Celtic warriors he found there. The union between the three powerful men broke down and as Rome’s democracy was a hotbed of corruption and chaos, it was inevitable that a civil war would ensue. Caesar came out on top in that conflict and became absolute dictator of Rome.

One side issue of note is that the decaying Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt was ruled by a queen named Cleopatra, who Durant tells us, was by origin a Macedonian Greek and was therefore probably a blonde and not the raven haired brunette of movie fame. Caesar’s relationship with her was disastrous and has been the subject of many soap opera style movies but in the grand scheme of human history is practically irrelevant. So, we move on.

Grant calls Caesar’s conquest of Gaul a decisive act in world history, by which central Europe was opened up to Mediterranean civilization. He also goes on to quote the Roman, Cicero, that Caesar’s conquests were a disaster for Rome. Grant tells us that “His

134

army was the most potent, effective, responsive martial instrument the world has ever seen.” Dodge has written a nearly 800 page book on Caesar’s military successes and Caesar himself authored books relating his successes. In fact, there are countless books on the subject of his military victories and how they affected world history.

Eventually, he was assassinated by his political rivals, even some he thought to be friends, for his arrogance and his assumption of all power in Rome.

Gaius Octavius, who became the Caesar Augustus spoken of in Luke 2:1, was known as Octavian during his rise to power. Julius Caesar sponsored his career and adopted him. Octavian pursued a 14 year struggle after the dictator’s death for power and eventually became emperor of Rome finally defeating Caesar’s friend Marc Antony through Octavian’s own ally, Agrippa, in 31 BC. The struggle which had lasted since Julius Caesar’s murder in 44BC was destined to come to an end with Antony’s defeat. The next year, Antony and Cleopatra, who had become his lover also, committed suicide. Augustus received the title of Chief Priest in 12BC and “Father of the Country” in 2BC. . He continued to rule until his death in 14AD with his handpicked successor, Tiberius, exercising most of the real power, or so Grant tells us.

The Tiberius of Luke 3:1, was in his mid-50’s when he finally assumed power although he had been, in fact, if not in name, ruler for some time. These rules overlap as an old (Augustus was 76 when he died) Caesar looks to his successor for carrying on the more difficult duties of office. But, one would assume that the events of Luke 3:1 would have occurred 15 years after his official taking of office as emperor. This would fit in with Christ’s age, as understood by both theologians and historians.

To God, these important men in secular history deserve only a footnote and His appearance with mankind, living as a man, suffering temptation, hunger, thirst, and eventually death, as men do, is the most important event in human history. The birth, life, death, and resurrection represent the hinge upon which all human history swings. You won’t find Christ mentioned in contemporary secular writings during his life or even just after it, as to the world’s way of thinking, He was just another insignificant person. He did not lead armies, conquer territories, or slaughter millions of people but more has been written about Him than about any other man in history. As the Christian movement grew, from what was thought to be a mere sect of Judaism, to a religious annoyance to Rome, to finally the state religion of declining Rome, it filled the earth, like the mustard seed of Matthew 13, that grew to a great size, only to have the birds of the air, a reference to Satanic entities, lodge in its uppermost branches. Still, as God showed Elijah in 1 Kings 19:18, God has always kept a remnant to Himself.

The events after Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection in about 33AD are dominated by the Jewish war of rebellion against Roman authority and such events as the destruction of Jerusalem and other events such as the mass murder and suicide at the hilltop fortress of Masada. Josephus, a priest and a Pharisee, was put in charge of the Galilean resistance

135

and was eventually captured by the Romans. He then chronicled the destruction of Judea and the city of Jerusalem in his writings which are still available today. By many, he is not considered to be an impartial historian, given to exaggeration and the peculiar kind of fancy that comes when one is passionate and personally involved in the historical events about which one is writing. But, he gives a dramatic account of the way the Jewish
nation, subservient to Rome, turned in on itself and destroyed many of its own. Their appears to have been both a war of rebellion against Rome and a civil war among the various Jewish groups themselves. The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple are foretold by Jesus Himself, as you will read. Josephus speaks about Jesus as being Christ and tells of His resurrection so that it must have been common knowledge due to the statements of Christians. His reference to Jesus, as quoted by Eusebius, and found in extant (currently existing) copies of his work, is highly controversial and many consider it to be a later interpolation (addition) but others point out that it does not imply that Josephus was a believer but rather mocking the belief that Jesus is the Messiah.

The historian, Suetonius, writing nearly a century later, mocks the whole belief of the resurrection as mere superstition, certainly after he sacrificed a chicken to one of his own deities. Pliny the younger refers to early Christian worship in one of his letters to the Emperor Trajan and Lucian of Samosata mocks the faith of Christians in his extant writing. So, there is clear historical reference to the existence of the Christian faith in the first and second centuries and it is therefore certain that it was not, as some liberals say, an invention of the early third or late second century.

In Josephus’ work, “Antiquities”, he details the war between the Jews and Rome that led to Jerusalem’s destruction in which more than a million Jews were slaughtered and again they were dispersed in what is known as the second Diaspora, all over the world.

As we have previously stated, in 143BC Simon Maccabee secured the independence of Judea, the area that was formerly part of the ancient state of Israel, from the Seleucid king. He was named general and high priest of the Second Jewish Commonwealth by a popular assembly which also made his office hereditary in his Hasmonean family. Judea became a theocracy or a union of state and religion under this dynasty of priest-kings. His family spent two generations trying to strengthen the borders of this militarily weak kingdom by conquering or absorbing Samaria, Edom, Moab, and Galilee among other areas. This dynasty, whose forbears had fought so hard to have religious freedom under the tyranny of the pagan Greek Seleucids now used the sword to enforce the dictates of Hebrew law on the conquered. Eventually, they lost their religious zeal as well, though, and reverted more and more back to the Hellenized pagan habits of their former conquerors. Finally, when a dispute over rulership occurred both parties appealed to the superpower, Rome, under the general Pompey, for support. In 63BC he made Judea a part of the Roman province of Syria. In 54BC Crassus robbed the temple of the treasures that were left.



136

Herod was installed by Rome, according to Durant, in 37BC. He was by all accounts an evil man, a despotic ruler. He killed entire families if one was accused of conspiring against him and even imprisoned and killed members of his own immediate family. He tore down the Temple of Zerubbabel and built the one that would later be destroyed by Rome. When Herod died his will divided his kingdom between his three remaining sons. There was a tremendous tension between the pagan Greek inhabitants of this small
country and the devout Jewish population. Most people were peasant farmers so successful that in the time of Christ they raised enough wheat to export a surplus. The Temple itself was the national bank where the Sanhedrin or the Great Council of the Elders of Israel met. This institution might have arose under the Seleucids to replace the Biblical advisors to Moses in Numbers 16 but we aren’t sure. A group of Israeli dissidents against Prime Minister Sharon’s government reinstituted a version of the Sanhedrin in October, 2004 and challenged the secular government’s authority. The Sanhedrin of the first century BC or AD could command a punishment of death for a religious offense but could not carry it out without the consent of the civil power. The two main factions were the Pharisees and the Sadducees mentioned in the Bible.

The conflict between pagan authority and Jewish worship came to a head under the emperor Caligula who wanted to make the worship of the emperor the unifying religion throughout the empire. This took place after Christ’s resurrection, with Caligula acclaimed emperor in 37AD according to Grant. To sum up his reign one can easily say that he was a monster; perverse, cruel, hateful, and completely demented. Caligula had insomnia, was plagued by nightmares, and was called everything from schizophrenic to a chronic alcoholic. He was mocking and cruel to the Jews, particularly.

Jewish rebellion was constant and getting worse as each Roman puppet ruler over them increased their misery by misrule. The Jewish expectation was for relief at the hand of a military messiah who would throw off foreign yokes and reinstitute the glory of Solomon’s reign. There was no room in their theology for a suffering Messiah, come to save them from their sins, to die, and then to return to save them from the world or Hell. The verses in the prophets concerning the suffering of the Messiah were completely ignored in favor of those verses that predicted victory. The two advents of Christ were completely misunderstood, even when He Himself made the distinction clear to them. Bands of Zealots would assassinate disloyal Jews and Roman retribution was violent and merciless. While older Hebrews argued that revolt against the world’s greatest empire would be national suicide the younger, hot-heads reacted violently to the Roman crucifixions of rebels and the theft of their families’ property. Two factions, one wanting to fight Rome and one resisting that effort, fought a bloody civil war. In 68BC a pitched battle was fought and the radicals won. Josephus said that it was not uncommon to see towns filled with corpses from the fighting. The gentiles of Caesarea rose up and killed many Jews and sold others into slavery. The Jewish radicals destroyed many towns in Palestine in their rage.



137

When Josephus was defending Jotopata under siege by Vespasian, he was captured. He then made the statement that Vespasian was destined to be emperor. This resulted in his release and then his job as an advisor to the general in the war against the Jews, making Josephus a traitor. When Vespasian left for Alexandria, Josephus stayed and accomp-anied Vespasian’s son, Titus, to Jerusalem to lay siege to that city. Tacitus, Roman historian, claimed that 600,000 rebels were held up in Jerusalem. When the inhabitants of Jerusalem were starving they made forays for food and thousands of them were crucified when caught by the Romans. The siege lasted for five months and the streets were clogged with corpses. Over a hundred thousand bodies were thrown over the walls. Some Jews swallowed gold coins and tried to escape only to be captured and to have their bellies slit open to retrieve the money. When Titus took half the city he offered liberal surrender terms but they were rejected. Against his express orders soldiers set fire to the Temple and burned the wooden part of it completely. No quarter was given and over a million Jews were slaughtered. Some rebels fled to the hilltop fortress of Masada, where they committed suicide en masse after killing their families before they could fall to the Romans.

There was then scattered rebellion here and there but for the most part Rome was completely victorious. 70AD marked the Temple’s destruction. The high priesthood and the Sanhedrin were abolished. Another million Jews fled and spread around the empire, the first dispersion or Diaspora being six centuries or more before with the Babylonian Captivity. There were already many Jews scattered around the empire, so much so, that nearly 50 years previous to this Strabo announced that they were everywhere but this resembled a flood of refugees to every part of the empire. There was another revolt in 115AD and thousands of Jews were once again slaughtered in Egypt and Cyrene. But, the
last effort was under the leadership of Simeon Bar Cochba in 132. When that, too, failed it was said that so many Jews were sold into slavery that the price of a Jew was less than that of a horse. Jews hid in the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and within a hundred years it was said that only Jews lived in Babylon. But, unlike virtually all ancient people, the Jews did survive as a people for 2,000 years, being harassed and murdered by nearly everyone they came into contact with, more proof of God’s providence in keeping them intact in spite of their rebellion. The Bible is replete with prophecies that God is not yet done with the Jewish people and at the end of history they play an important role.

The Jewish race has long been very involved in the history of the world and as a dispersed people, with no homeland, they were everywhere, bringing intellect and vitality to every culture in which they resided. It has been said that if seven men were involved in some important event in human history that at least three of them had to be Jews. They hold positions of influence all out of proportion to their numbers in medicine, finance, entertainment, and all other fields of human endeavor. It has been said that when a French king asked for proof of God’s existence, an advisor offered him, “The Jew”.

According to Carsten Thiede, as revealed in his book, ‘Eyewitness to Jesus’, the earliest known papyrus that exists containing a small part of the gospel of Matthew is

138

from just before the fall of Jerusalem. It may well have been that the apostle Matthew was still alive when this copy was made. Other scholars insist that this scrap of papyrus is much older than the 60’s AD date that Thiede ascribed to it. It is called the Magdalen Papyrus.

The oldest thing that traditional historians are certain of in regard to Christianity is not the existence of Christ Himself but the existence of Christians. There are references to their persecution written early in the second century. However, in Josh McDowell’s ‘ The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict’ he outlines several extrabiblical sources for
Christ’s life. These are pagan, non-Christian, non-Jewish sources. One is Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman historian who lived from 55 to 120AD. His most famous works were the Annals and Histories He has been considered Rome’s greatest historian, a man known for his integrity and truthfulness. He refers to Christ’s death when talking about the persecution of the Christians by Nero. He is also the only pagan historian who mentions Pontius Pilate by name.

As previously mentioned, Lucian of Samosata, a Greek satirist of the latter half of the second century, mockingly speaks of Christ’s crucifixion and the Christian’s worship of Him in his work, The Death of Peregrine. Suetonius, historian from which Michael Grant’s “The Twelve Caesars” derives much of its base information, writing in his Life of Claudius speaks of the Christians being expelled from Rome and speaks also of Christ Himself. This reference places Christians in Rome less than twenty years after the crucifixion. Around 52AD a Roman writer named Thallus wrote about Christ, but this is found only in a reference by Julius Africanus in 221AD. Phlegon, in his history called Chronicles is also referred to by Africanus in his Chronography. Mara Bar-Serapion, a Syrian stoic philosopher, writing about 70AD, pens a letter from prison to his own son comparing Jesus to Socrates and Protagoras, two Greek philosophers.

In addition, there are Jewish references to Christ’s crucifixion in the Babylonian Talmud. Then we have the disputed testimony of Josephus. All of these references and many more waiting to be found can be added to the testimony of the early Christian leaders called the Ante-Nicene (before the council of Nicea in the 300’s AD) “Fathers”, a term Jesus Himself forbade the use of when referring to religious leaders in Matthew 23:9, to give a full picture of the reality of the historical Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, many historians, inspired by the doubts of so-called professing Christians of the German “Higher Criticism” of the late 18th and the 19th centuries tend to doubt whether or not Jesus even existed.

A Christian is a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Acts 11:26 and a disciple in Luke 14:26,27, & 33 is someone who has put all else aside to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. So, who were these disciples? Well, in the early church they, with few exceptions such as Paul, the physician Luke, and perhaps the Theophilus that Luke writes to in Acts, chapter one, common, ordinary people. We have several fishermen listed in the Bible, of which Simon Peter was one, a tax collector named Matthew also known as Levi, and in

139

Paul’s letters mention is made of a Quartus, a common numerical designation for a slave (Romans 16:23), Lydia, a business woman engaged in selling purple dye (Acts 16:14), and others who are anonymous people with no fame or celebrity attached to them. For the first century, at least of the Christian faith it was populated by people who would not have been considered important at all by the Romans, outside of the occasional runaway slave like Onesimus of Colossians 4:9 and the Book of Philemon.

The apostles, according to atheist Durant, and I quote, “were apparently unanimous in believing that Christ would soon return to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth”.
This expectation of Christ coming to set up His literal Kingdom of Heaven, spoken of in many verses in the Old Testament as an everlasting kingdom that would physically crush all others and one which Jesus Himself said was not now of this earth (John 18:36; Acts 1:6,7; Daniel 2:44; Revelation 11:15) is in contrast to the spiritual Kingdom of God which we are told in Luke 17 is invisible and lies within each believer (Luke 17:20,21) and consists of righteousness and peace according to Paul in Romans 14:17 and is present now. Durant makes his statement ignoring the rather obvious statements by the apostles that even though the Christian was to be in constant watchfulness for Christ’s imminent return that God’s sense of time and ours were completely different and what we might expect to be a short time could indeed be thousands of years (Psalm 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8). Each generation is told to be looking up, waiting expectantly for Him to come back to claim the earth’s kingdoms. Later, when Rome began to become melded with Christianity and to some the state and the church were one unified entity it began to be believed by politically minded and powerful Christians that they were living in the millennium of Christ’s reign on earth which was now and not in the future and which was changed from being the thousand year period literally spoken of in the scripture to simply being a long period of time. This belief that Christ instituted both the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of God led the political state church of later years to believe that it was a
spiritual entity ruling a temporal entity that controlled spiritual matters and that much of prophecy was not literal but merely an allegory. This is the basis for crusades, inquisitions, and untold slaughter for two millennia, down to the present day. Eventually, a belief even arose that Christ already returned at the destruction of Jerusalem and to justify the belief in the presence of both kingdoms that He was even ruling in a spiritual dimension right now, pleased with crusades and inquisitions, done in His name. Even today, most Protestant and Catholic thinkers believe that both kingdoms are one and the same. But, it was not so with the early Christians.

The early Christians continued to live under Judaic religious practice as we are told in the book of Acts that they went regularly to the Temple and observed the dietary and ceremonial laws. Christianity itself was viewed, at first, as merely a sect of Judaism, the Nazarenes after Jesus of Nazareth, like one would look at a Pharisee or Sadducee or the Essenes, a sect that withdrew itself from society and lived in isolation. At first, they proclaimed their faith mostly to Jews, even preaching in the Temple itself. After the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts 7 Greek converts fled to Samaria and Antioch, establishing strong Jewish communities there. It is at Antioch where they were first called Christians.

140

Apostles and disciples spread the Gospel from Damascus to Rome. Paul himself was converted on the road to Damascus on a mission to arrest and imprison Christians. The believers met in private houses or rented rooms and modeled themselves on the synagogue. The term ekklesia which was the term for a popular assembly of municipal government was used to describe their gatherings. It has come to us as the church, when referring to the people. We have also come to refer to the building that Christians assemble in as a church. The Christians admitted slaves and were mostly lower class people with a sprinkling of the rich and powerful. Women were also admitted to the congregation and some became important figures in the early church.

Tacitus, the Roman historian, was no fan of the Emperor Nero, and in his Annals he blames the great fire that destroyed much of Rome between 64AD and 67AD (depending on which historian you read) on that evil tyrant. He then tells how Nero blamed the fire on the unpopular Christians and how this led to the first great persecution by Rome. I am including a translation of this famous passage from Tacitus made by Richard Hooker;

“Yet no human effort, no princely largess nor offerings to the gods could make that infamous rumor disappear that Nero had somehow ordered the fire. Therefore, in order to abolish that rumor, Nero falsely accused and executed with the most exquisite punishments those people called Christians, who were infamous for their abominations. The originator of the name, Christ, was executed as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius; and though repressed, this destructive superstition erupted again, not only through Judea, which was the origin of this evil, but also through the city of Rome, to which all that is horrible and shameful floods together and is celebrated. Therefore, first those were seized who admitted their faith, and then, using the information they provided, a vast multitude were convicted, not so much for the crime of burning the city, but for hatred of the human race. And perishing they were additionally
made into sports: they were killed by dogs by having the hides of beasts attached to them, or they were nailed to crosses or set aflame, and, when the daylight passed away, they were used as nighttime lamps. Nero gave his own gardens for this spectacle and performed a Circus game, in the habit of a charioteer mixing with the plebs or driving about the race-course. Even though they were clearly guilty and merited being made the most recent example of the consequences of crime, people began to pity these sufferers, because they were consumed not for the public good but on account of the fierceness of one man.”

John Foxe in the famous Foxe’s Book of Martyrs describes Nero’s persecution as such;
“The first persecution of the Church took place in the year 67, under Nero, the sixth emperor of Rome. This monarch reigned for the space of five years, with tolerable credit to himself, but then gave way to the greatest extravagancy of temper, and to the most atrocious barbarities. Among other diabolical whims, he ordered that the city of Rome should be set on fire, which order was executed by his officers, guards, and servants. While the imperial city was in flames, he went up to the tower of Macaenas, played upon

141
his harp, sung the song of the burning of Troy, and openly declared that 'he wished the ruin of all things before his death.' Besides the noble pile, called the Circus, many other palaces and houses were consumed; several thousands perished in the flames, were smothered in the smoke, or buried beneath the ruins.
This dreadful conflagration continued nine days; when Nero, finding that his conduct was greatly blamed, and a severe odium cast upon him, determined to lay the whole upon the Christians, at once to excuse himself, and have an opportunity of glutting his sight with new cruelties. This was the occasion of the first persecution; and the barbarities exercised on the Christians were such as even excited the commiseration of the Romans themselves. Nero even refined upon cruelty, and contrived all manner of punishments for the Christians that the most infernal imagination could design. In particular, he had some sewed up in skins of wild beasts, and then worried by dogs until they expired; and others dressed in shirts made stiff with wax, fixed to axletrees, and set on fire in his gardens, in order to illuminate them. This persecution was general throughout the whole Roman Empire; but it rather increased than diminished the spirit of Christianity. In the course of it, St. Paul and St. Peter were martyred.
To their names may be added, Erastus, chamberlain of Corinth; Aristarchus, the Macedonian, and Trophimus, an Ephesians, converted by St. Paul, and fellow-laborer with him, Joseph, commonly called Barsabas, and Ananias, bishop of Damascus; each of the Seventy.”
In spite of the fact that Roman politicians would lament on how Christian congre-gations not only took care of their own poor but the pagan poor around them as well, in spite of statements about how exemplary and virtuous Christian women were thought to be, and in spite of the Christian habit of hanging around garbage dumps to save and raise discarded Roman children, unwanted by their parents, the second great persecution occurred around 81AD and performed by the Emperor Domitian Christians were accused of everything from cannibalism from a misunderstanding of the Lord’s Supper to hatred of humanity by the doctrine that people are not born good but bad and must be saved. Of course, there was also the refusal to worship the emperor, which was the chief source of resentment toward them by the civil authority.
The second great persecution of the Christians was under Domitian in or about 81AD and is described by Foxe in this way;
‘The emperor Domitian, who was naturally inclined to cruelty, first slew his brother, and then raised the second persecution against the Christians. In his rage he put to death some of the Roman senators, some through malice; and others to confiscate their estates. He then commanded all the lineage of David be put to death.
Among the numerous martyrs that suffered during this persecution was Simeon, bishop of Jerusalem, who was crucified; and St. John, who was boiled in oil, and afterward

142
banished to Patmos. Flavia, the daughter of a Roman senator, was likewise banished to Pontus; and a law was made,
"That no Christian, once brought before the tribunal, should be exempted from punishment without renouncing his religion."
A variety of fabricated tales were, during this reign, composed in order to injure the Christians. Such was the infatuation of the pagans, that, if famine, pestilence, or earthquakes afflicted any of the Roman provinces, it was laid upon the Christians. These persecutions among the Christians increased the number of informers and many, for the sake of gain, swore away the lives of the innocent.
Another hardship was, that, when any Christians were brought before the magistrates, a test oath was proposed, when, if they refused to take it, death was pronounced against them; and if they confessed themselves Christians, the sentence was the same.
The following were the most remarkable among the numerous martyrs who suffered during this persecution.
Dionysius, the Areopagite, was an Athenian by birth, and educated in all the useful and ornamental literature of Greece. He then travelled to Egypt to study astronomy, and made very particular observations on the great and supernatural eclipse, which happened at the time of our Savior's crucifixion.
The sanctity of his conversation and the purity of his manners recommended him so strongly to the Christians in general, that he was appointed bishop of Athens.
Nicodemus, a benevolent Christian of some distinction, suffered at Rome during the rage of Domitian's persecution.
Protasius and Gervasius were martyred at Milan.
Timothy was the celebrated disciple of St. Paul, and bishop of Ephesus, where he zealously governed the Church until A.D. 97. At this period, as the pagans were about to celebrate a feast called Catagogion, Timothy, meeting the procession, severely reproved them for their ridiculous idolatry, which so exasperated the people that they fell upon him with their clubs, and beat him in so dreadful a manner that he expired of the bruises two days later. “
We have gone on beyond the intended timeline scope of this class and we will return to the development of Christianity in another class. But, for the next class we will examine what life was like in the Roman Empire of the first century.