 Good morning everyone. We just open in prayer. Can someone be willing to open in prayer? Father God, we thank you. We bless you for this day, Father. We submit each one of us unto your loving hands. Father God, give us revelation and understanding to know what's teaching and use it for your glory, Father. In Jesus' name we pray. Thank you. So we'll just continue from where we stopped yesterday. I think we needed to, I was supposed to give you all the reference, right? So that's Acts 20, 22 to 24. I'll just read that out. So Paul says, And now compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit wants me, that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me. My only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me. The task of testifying to the good news of God's grace. So here that's where Paul is saying before he goes to many cities, he already knows that those are the things that await him, but he still goes in because he knows what God has entrusted to him. He knows the task that God has given him, and he is committed to completing that no matter what the cost is. And if you look here, he also says, I'm going to Jerusalem compelled by the Spirit. So this was the same question you were asking about, why did he go to Jerusalem, although he knew that. So he felt that the Holy Spirit was leading him there. If it meant that he would die, it didn't matter to him. Because I was telling you about the prophets books of Jesus God. Yeah. And you see, even in verse 23, the Holy Spirit wants me that these things are there in every city that I go into. So he recognizes that the Holy Spirit himself is revealing these things. But he continues to do it because he feels that that is his calling. He believes that this is calling. So yeah. Okay, let's go into today's. So yesterday we finished off the last part of Paul's life. After his first imprisonment into his second imprisonment and then his death. And then we looked at a little bit of like a summary of his life and then we moved into a look at the whole church right from the first century till our present day. We're going to be looking at what are some major events that took place. Before that we looked at a few scripture passages just to look at why it's important to look at church history. Why is it important to look at how God has moved in the past and the main thing from the scriptures is so that we can learn from the generations past, right? We have the testimonies of what God has done in generations past and so we can take that with us. We can believe God for greater things and we can have the faith to fight our present day battles also. So that was our main reason for looking through what all has happened in the past 2000 or more years. So let's start with the beginning. So the first century is when Jesus comes. So we look at AD. So there are different ways of the way time is looked at, but AD is one of the most common things. Nowadays people also look at CE and BC. So CE is the Christian era and BC is the before Christian era. That's another way of saying BC and AD. So BC is before Christ. AD is Anodomni which is the year of the Lord. That is the year Jesus was born. So AD was developed in 525 AD by a monk named Dionysus. And so since then it's been used as a way to look at time. Online students are all able to hear me. Okay, there's some construction work going on here. So I don't know how much of that is picking up. Yeah, you're allowed to hear me. Okay, thank you. Okay, so when we're looking at these early initial dates, we don't have the exact dates because it's more an estimate or an approximate kind of date. Some dates will be specific where we know like a historian has recorded something or something like that, but the other dates will be approximate. And the dates given here will be the start and end dates of when people began their ministry. So it's not their birth and death, but the start and end of their ministry. So Jesus was born around 10 BC and or 3 BC somewhere between that time between 10 to 3 BC. And then he was crucified in AD 30 or 33. So based on when he was born about 33 years after that. So we're using AD 30 as the approximate year of his death. And from there, all of the other things we look at. So the day of Pentecost based on the fact that we think that Jesus died in AD 30 and was raised up from the day in AD 30. Then the day of Pentecost also happened in AD 30. So that's when the church was birthed. That's when the Holy Spirit was poured out and from there the church began. AD 44 is when Herod Agrippa dies. So if you remember Herod Agrippa in scripture we see there's a passage where he gives a speech and people are really amazed by his speech. And they say this is the voice of God, not a voice of man. And then because he doesn't acknowledge God in that God kind of like he's he dies at that time. And it's God's judgment on him for not acknowledging God in that. And so after that is when Barnabas and Paul start their first missionary journey. That's recorded in Acts 13. So Acts 12 is where Herod Agrippa's death is recorded and Acts 13 is where Barnabas and Paul begin their first journey. AD 52 is when the apostle Paul arrived in India. So like Thomas arrives in India. Let's just look, I just put that up on a map so that we can see. Okay, so this is the area that Thomas ministered in. Okay, so we have he arrives in Malabar. So that coastal region is called Malabar and the Coromandel Coast in India. And that's where the church began. So we have a very close to Jesus's Jesus's ministry. The church in India started like that's quite amazing to have such a long history of Christianity. Every time people talk about Christianity being a Western religion or coming from the West, although that definitely has had an influence on the church in India. The start of the church in India is rooted in the apostles itself. So that's really like something for us to like really be grateful for that we get to sharing that. AD 64 is where the emperor Nero was the emperor of Rome started persecuting the Christians. Okay, so AD 66 to 68 is when Paul and Peter under emperor Nero's rule is when they are believed to have been killed. And during this persecution, basically what he does is he blames Christians as a fire that happens in Rome. And it's a huge fire that goes on for about six days before they're able to put it out. And in those six days out of 14 districts in Rome, 10 districts have been destroyed by the fire. So it was a huge fire and once that happened Nero blamed Christians for the fire and he used that as an excuse to then start persecuting Christians. So it was really like a very big time of persecution for Christians. He would use their bodies as human torches in his garden basically to start fires there. So this is where there's more persecution that's happening from the government. So before this, the church was facing persecution. We read so much about it in the New Testament, but most of that persecution was coming from the Jews. But here it's where it starts to come in from Rome itself, from the government itself. Which means it's more powerful also because they rule over that whole area. AD 70 is when Jerusalem is destroyed. So there's a Roman emperor named Titus and he destroyed Jerusalem and at this time the Jews revolted against the Roman authority. But Christians on the other hand did not take part in the revolt and they escaped out of Jerusalem. And they went to a place called Pella which is east of the Jordan River. You can see it on the map here if you're logged in. It's okay, no pressure to log in but if you want to see the map it's there. So there's a place called Pella. So from Jerusalem which was destroyed they all escaped to Pella. In 1890 so that's close to the end of the first century. There was a council of Jamia and this is where it's recorded by Josephus who is a Jewish historian. He recorded that the final Hebrew Old Testament was agreed upon. So until this time there were many books that were being used in the Hebrew scriptures among the Jews as well. So there were the books that we have now but there were also additional books that were written by other people. So during this council they finalized saying these are the specific books we are going to accept as part of our scriptures. The other books will still have authority because they have a lot of history. They have a lot of Jewish teaching but they will not be the doctrine that we follow. So they distinguish between what is doctrinal and what is helpful for their faith. The Jews themselves also had the same set of books and the Christians adopted the same set of books as our Old Testament. So this we'll see the difference between the Protestants and Catholics is where there's a slight difference. So some books that were not added in our Old Testament continue to be in the Catholic Bible because they had decided to keep those books in their scriptures at a later council that met in I think it's the 4th or 5th century. So AD 95, the book of Revelation is written. AD 96 to AD 150 is where the New Testament books start to be more fully recognized. So all of these epistles and all of the letters that the different apostles had written were being circulated among the churches. So they started to be recognized as important documents for the church's faith. AD 96 to AD 150. And further to yesterday's discussion we were talking about how do we know that these were circulated to all of these churches. So even in archaeological findings in all of that they found documents from different letters, so different parts of these manuscripts in different parts of like geographically they were distributed. So the same manuscript or copies of the same manuscript were found in different places. That's how we know that the letters circulated among the churches. AD 98 is when the Apostle John dies. So 95 he writes the book of Revelation 98, he dies when he's about 100 years old. AD 99, the whole New Testament is complete. So all the books that were written in the New Testament are complete by AD 99. So there's also like all of the writings of the New Testament are very close to Jesus's time of ministry. So people who are defending like a lot of people question the authenticity of what is written in the New Testament. How do we know that it is true? One of the ways is how close was it to the actual events because the further away it goes, the more chances that that history will be distorted. But the closer it is, we know that there were people who would have been alive during Jesus's time. They would have seen his ministry. So if other people were writing and they were writing things that were false, there would be other people who could question that. So people who saw Jesus's ministry could see what was being written by the apostles and could verify whether it was true or not true. So that's how we can one of the ways we know that all of this is very authentic and trustworthy. AD 100, the first Christians are reported in these three countries, Monaco, Algeria and Sri Lanka. So we'll just look at that. So I didn't put this on the map, sorry. So Monaco is in North Africa. Monaco is in France, like the southeast border of France. So the country of France is there. Monaco is like a small thing just near the sea. And Algeria is on the other side of the sea in North Africa. And then Sri Lanka is in south of India. No, I didn't put that map in because I couldn't find a good map for these places. But so Monaco and Algeria are on two sides of the sea that divides Europe and Africa. So the Tyrian sea is there. And so they are on both sides of that. And then Sri Lanka is in south of India. Then second century. So we finished those first hundred years after Jesus' birth. We come to the second, next hundred years. So persecution didn't continue at the same kind of intensity as it was initially, but it was there within the church. But the other danger that came in was from inside the church, which was the danger of heresies. So heresies are where there is wrong teaching that is not in line with what is believed about God according to scriptures and what is doctrinally accepted by the church. So it was something that was against church doctrine that was being taught within the church. So we look at some of these heresies. The first one is Gnosticism. So Gnosticism, there are various things that Gnosticism covers because there were many different things that were being taught and all of those things got clubbed in and they were called Gnosticism. The first one is the secret knowledge. So they said to be saved, you have to have a secret knowledge that will come from God and only then you can be saved. That was one of the teachings. The other was that the material world is evil and only the spiritual world is good. So they elevated the spirit over the material world and everything that is material, everything that is physical was considered evil. Everything that is spiritual is considered good. So it was a mix of Jewish, Christian and Greek thought that came in. So they started mixing up all of these things and teaching it as Christian doctrine. So that was the problem that the church was facing. So the church responded to this with teaching to make sure that Christians were not going away from the truth. So some of the things that were affirmed within the church was that Jesus was fully incarnated and became a human being because Gnostics were teaching that the material world is evil then how could Jesus become something evil? That was the question. If the material world, the physical world is evil how could God kind of adopt, how could he become flesh? So the church taught about the incarnation of Jesus about his physical death and the resurrection of the body. They talked about how God has revealed himself through history in humanity. It's not like just a spiritual revelation, it is through human history and about the importance of Jesus' death and resurrection for salvation. So Jesus like physically died and there is a bodily resurrection and this is so important for us for salvation to know that Jesus was not just some spiritual being who didn't die. Basically he couldn't have died if he didn't have a body. And so if he didn't die and if he didn't rise from the dead then salvation is not possible for humanity. So this was some things that the church was making sure was corrected and they were preaching that to preach against Gnosticism. Another heresy is Masinism. So here there was someone named Masin within the church and he picked a few books from the scriptures and said that these are the scriptures that we should be following. The others are not as important. So this was rejected by the church leaders and he was excommunicated from the church. Montenism. So this was charismatic movement where they were saying that they were receiving new revelations, new prophecies and they were passing judgments on other Christians. So this was another heresy. So during this time because there were heresies there were Christian leaders who were responding to the heresies and they were writing books. They were teaching to make sure that true doctrine was retained within the church. So this is called the age of the apologist because that's when the apologist started to do their work or that whole idea of apologist came into being because they had to defend the faith. So Iranians and Justin Martyr are some important apologists from that time. And we look a little more at some of the writings that came out at the time as we follow through. AD 107. There's a polycap. I believe he's the first bishop that's appointed because we haven't looked at any other bishops but he was appointed as the bishop of Smyrna. So he was actually discipled by the Apostle John. So directly by one of the apostles he was discipled and then he becomes the bishop of Smyrna. We'll just look at that. So Smyrna is here as you can see the Mediterranean Sea. Smyrna is here in this border and then we have other different places that Christianity had spread. So we see Ephesus here, Thyatira, Sardis and that's where the first bishop was appointed. AD 108. Ignatius of Antioch is martyred. So actually as I was reading this, all of them have, each of these people have such powerful stories of how they impacted the church, how they stayed true to the faith right up to death. So all of these people were given opportunities to denounce their faith and to save their own lives. But they chose not to do that and to be martyred for the sake of their faith and it is because of that the truth within the church has been preserved. If they had denounced their faith, they're denouncing the truth that they had been preaching. Then it didn't give other Christians the confidence to say that what these people were preaching was true and we can hold on to it. So for the sake of preserving that truth and preserving the church, all of these people were willing to give up their lives. So we see Ignatius of Antioch. This is the Antioch that's in Syria, which is where Paul's home church. We talked about that same Antioch. And Ignatius was also a student under the Apostle John. So Ignatius did a lot of writing. A lot of these early church fathers did a lot of writing. And so when we look at his writings, it gives us some understanding of what the early church was teaching. There are seven letters that he wrote to the churches covering the deity of Christ, the Lord's table, so communion, the structure of the local church, having bishops, having elders, having deities. How do you have all of these people in authority? What is their role? What is their function? All of those things. So this was important for, because the church was just, all of these local churches were being raised, there had to be leadership overseeing the work that was done. So to make sure that that was properly organized, was understood by the churches, each person knew their function, knew their role. So all of that were things that he wrote about. And then finally, he was taken to Rome and he was put to death by wild animals. So the Colosseum where they would put prisoners or they would put criminals to death by use of animals, that was how he was put to death. AD 125, Aristides, he writes the first Christian apology. So the first time there is a written defense of what we believe and he gives it to the emperor of Rome, Hadrian. AD 150 to AD 190 is where the New Testament books start to be recognized as authoritative and as part of the scriptures that the church will follow, that Christians will follow. So most of the books are recognized. There are only a few more books that are still not decided on. So they're still trying to decide should this be included in scripture or should we just keep it as outside scripture but informative for the church. AD 150 is where the Latin... So the first translation of the Bible, right? The Latin version. So it was translated from the Greek Septuagint into Latin. So the first Latin version of the Bible. AD 155, Justin Marto writes his first apology. So previously was the first apology that was ever written and now Justin Marto also writes one. So this is where it's believed that the age of the apologists started. So after that, there were many other people who followed this. Theophilus, Athenogaris, Irenaeus, Turtilian, all of these people who followed. It was kind of like they trained one another. The apologists would train the next generation and would train and train and that's how they were learning under one another just like there were disciples training the following leaders of the church. The apologists also were leaders in the church but this important function of preserving truth was given to them. AD 155, we also see the Bishop Paulicap is martyred at age 84. So he's the one who was the Bishop of Smyrna. So sorry, I lost my... Yeah, at age 44. So Paulicap in turn, you see this thing of mentoring, raising up leaders all of that has been so important because with each generation that's dying out, there have to be leaders to take over. So Paulicap trained the church historian Irenaeus and so Irenaeus was able to then take over leadership within the church. So a lot of Christian history, we know so much about this because of someone named Eusebius. So he had written a history of the early church until AD 323. So so much of what we know of the church is because of his recordings of the history of the church. AD 177, Athenogorus writes a plea for Christians and here he talks about the Trinity a little bit and talks about the same substance. So there were lots of people who were coming to an understanding of what does the Trinity mean until then they only knew Yahweh, that's for the Jews, but for those from outside, from the Gentile background to understand what is how the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit related to one another. What does it mean to have the Trinity? Are there three gods, is there one God, all of these things? So the church leaders had to themselves have a revelation and understanding of what it means and then to be able to explain it to the people. So he talks about this and talks about the Father and Son having the same substance that is both being divine and both sharing in divinity together. Not one being lower, one being higher than the other. AD 183 to 186 is Irenaeus, so Irenaeus was trained by the bishop Paulic up. He becomes a bishop of Lugdanum and he writes against heresies and his book actually covers a lot of Gnosticism, so it addresses a lot of the things that the Gnostics were teaching. And Irenaeus is one of the strongest witness of his times to the apostolic age because Irenaeus was trained by Paulic up and Paulic up was trained by John. So he has a lot that he's able to share about the apostolic time because he was so strongly connected to it. AD 190 to AD 200. So Clement of Alexandria, he's a Christian theologian and he starts to teach new Christians in Alexandria and he writes three books talking about the Christian faith. So the basics of the Christian faith for new believers. AD 190, Pattainus of Alexandria comes to India in response to there's a request for Christian teachers and so he comes to India. So with that we come to the end of the first 200 years of the church and then we start the next century. AD 200, we have the first place that becomes a Christian state. So it's called Edessa, you can see it on the map here. So Edessa was right here above Antioch and above Judea and Syria. So it's right up here and this is the first place that was fully Christian. So meaning like politically Christian. So it's a Christian established state. And Carthage and Alexandria become leading centers. So we go to the next map. So Carthage and Alexandria were in North Africa and they become important places of Christian theological teaching and a lot of the leaders in the church come from these two places. So Origin, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria are few of the people who come from there and will actually write a lot and teach a lot on the Christian faith. AD 202 to AD 211, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus starts to forbid conversion to Christianity. So before it was just like persecution towards those who were reaching a following Christ. But now it's saying you're not allowed to become a Christian. That's coming from the government again. So the Roman emperor does this. But in spite of that, Christianity continues to spread. AD 200 to AD 220, Tertullian. So again from Carthage, he writes a lot of several books and tracks. One of them is called Against Praxis and it talks the most about Christianity. One of the most thorough descriptions of the Trinity is given in his writing. So this is where like the basics of understanding of who Jesus is. Like astrology, Trinitarian theology, all of these things come from these people who wrote at that time. It's not things that we've developed now in the 1900s or in 2000. All of our understandings of the Trinity, of Christ, of his divinity, all of that come from these early writings. 245 origin. So one of the Christian apologists and also from Carthage. He responds to a writing by someone named Celsus. So Celsus was someone who had actually written 70 years earlier and he had attacked a lot of what Christians believe. Basically saying that Jesus could not have had a miraculous conception. He could not have been born as a human because bringing again the material world is evil. How can God adopt an evil physical body, all of those things. And then he kind of came against everything about Jesus' life, about Jesus' childhood, his ministry, his death, his resurrection. He was also telling Christians don't follow Christianity, become a pagan. He was a philosopher so he was using a lot of philosophical thought to try and convince Christians that what they believed made no sense. So his writings were continuing to be a threat to the church. So after 70 years, he's written 70 years back, Origin writes a response to what he has written. And actually Celsus' writing is not available, we don't have his original writing, but Origin's response basically he quotes a lot of what Celsus said and then he responds to it. So that's how we know what Celsus had written in his criticism of Christianity. AD 248 is when Rome celebrates a thousand years of reigning over so much of Asia Minor and North Africa. But at this time they're starting to have some threats against their reign. So a lot of what we're reading about Christianity spread is within Rome itself. So when Jesus came, it was under the Roman Empire and Christianity continued to spread under the Roman Empire. But it did spread like we read, it spread to India, Sri Lanka, so outside of the Roman Empire as well. AD 250, Emperor Decius makes this commandment that everyone needs to offer pagan sacrifices. So kind of making everyone in the empire follow the Roman gods to show, to honor the Roman gods. And he says you have to offer the sacrifice and you have to show a certificate to prove that you offer the sacrifice. So there's a lot of persecution for those who are not following that order because it's coming straight from the emperor himself. And a lot of Christians actually give in to because of the persecution they give in and they go and sacrifice to the pagan gods. So now the church has to deal with what about these people who have done this? Do we still accept them into the church when they want to come back or do we say that they are not allowed anymore because they've given in? So that is one big question that the church has to deal with. Then there are intellectual attacks that increase against the church. So someone named Poffery writes against the Christians and talks against the apostles, the church leaders, the gospels, the Old Testament. So there's lots of, like all of the things we see nowadays is not something new to Christianity. Like we see so much writing against our faith, against whether it's in India or outside India, there's so much that's coming even internationally. But this is what the church has faced from the start. That's one thing for us to not only recognize that God continues to work in spite of these things, right? Even as we read this like wherever persecution, wherever challenges were coming in from, whether it was other people around the church, whether it was the leaders, the government itself, Christianity continued to spread, God continued to move. That is one thing to be encouraged by. The other thing is that there is so much truth that is preserved, that has been preserved by these early church leaders that we can go back to. And that we can also find confidence in. I remember when I was working that there was somebody who came and he was part of a cult and started to talk to me about certain things in the Bible saying, ask me questions about it. And usually when it's a cult, they will have supporting scriptures for whatever they are saying. And there are very specific ways of interpreting scripture. And I was a believer but I wasn't so knowledgeable about scripture. So I remember it was really confusing for me when he was saying all of those things to know always what I believe, really true is, have I just been convinced by somebody that this is what scripture means or this is what is true? But for us to find confidence in the fact that all of these challenges were there and responses were written to it based on scripture. And those responses kept the church going. The truth preserved the church and the church continued to grow. So what we believe, we can have confidence in what we believe because we know that it is truth that has lasted through so many challenges and people have continued to hold on to it. AD 300. Anthony the Great is from Egypt and he's the first monk. So this was a movement that started where people who were really serious about following God would leave their cities and move or wherever they were living and move into the desert. And would basically adopt a form of asceticism where they were giving up the world and going to seek God in a place that was free of distractions, free of worldly distractions. So this started the monastic movement which is a powerful movement within the church because we'll see later on as the church gains power politically. These people had rejected all of that and had gone primarily to seek God. And so they preserved a lot of the truth of just following Christ even when it's not attractive, even if it's not politically supported to just follow God. So he started this movement and they are people who we refer to as the church fathers or the desert fathers. We see among these monks that there was a lot of power in prayer, there was healing, deliverance, miracles that they experienced. So that power of the church continued to be preserved among these people. Although it was still being seen at this point within the church it was still being seen but among the monks we have records of that. So other important leaders who continued in this monastic life, Anthony the Great, Paccomius, Athanasius is pretty well known. I think we may read about him later or maybe I'm not sure. Hilarion, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict of Nursia, Gregory the Great. So lots of like very impactful leaders came from this movement. In 8300, North Africa becomes a key Christian center and Egypt alone has a million Christians by the end of the third century. So that's where the center of Christianity was, North Africa. And the role of the bishop continues to grow because the bishop oversees large areas of the church. They oversaw provinces within the Roman Empire. So the bishop starts to get more and more powerful because they're overseeing so many churches. So end of 300 years and then we start the next century. AD 303, Emperor Diocletian, begins to persecute the church and his intention is that Christianity should be completely removed from the empire. But he obviously fails, praise God, and the church continues to grow. AD 311, there's a new group of people called the Donates that rise up. They are following the leadership of one of the bishops within the church. The bishop named Donates Magnus and he leads a part of the church that breaks away from the larger church. Now the main disagreement here between these two sexes should leaders who rejected the faith under this persecution that happened, right? We did AD 303, this Diocletian persecuted the church. So there were Christian leaders, church leaders who had fallen away from the faith at that time. They've given up their faith to protect their lives. So the Donates and all those who followed him said such leaders should not be accepted back into the church. We cannot follow such leaders who gave up their faith under a time of persecution. Whereas the rest of the church was still accepting leaders back if they came back to the church and they were allowing them to continue to lead the church. So this is where the first split within the major split happens within the church and that division in the North African church continued for 300 years. And the church in that is weakened a bit because of this division that happened. Finally, we'll see in North Africa that Christianity reduces and is lost from that region. If we look now at North Africa, it's primarily a Muslim region. AD 312, this is where Christianity now begins to get political power. Until now it's just been a thing that was a movement among people, right? There was no support. In fact, there was opposition from the government. Now the government itself starts to promote Christianity because Constantine comes into power. In 312 is where Constantine is in power and he's going to battle against another emperor within the Roman Empire whose name is Maxentus. And as he's going to battle against this emperor, he has a vision and in the vision he sees the sign of cross and it says in this sign you will conquer. He sees that in his vision. And he wins this battle and so he says he attributes that to the Christian God because of the sign of the cross. And he starts to support Christianity because of that. In AD 313 is when the edict of Milan was issued and through this edict Christianity was legalized in Rome. Until then it was illegal. So he legalizes it and they start to rebuild church buildings that were destroyed. They start to restore things to the church that had been confiscated from the church during the persecution. So he starts to bring all of those things back. Okay. So we can stop here. Anything you want to share or talk about? I think we have a minute. Okay. We'll continue from then next week on Monday. We'll continue in the 4th century. Thank you. Have a good week.