The Rise of Christianity Explained

Christianity either is of divine origin, or it is not. If it is not of divine origin, then it is of human origin. If it is of human origin, then it is a false religion, because it claims to be of sacred design. On the other hand, if Christianity is of God, as it claims, there ought to be compelling evidence to buttress that affirmation. 

In this lesson, I would like for us to focus on several factors which argue for the sacred origin of the religious system founded by Jesus Christ. 

Factors Involved in the Rise of Christianity

There are a number of traits that characterized primitive Christianity that demand an explanation if one is to identify its originating force. Let us consider some of these. 

Christianity: A New Religion

The Christian movement was not a religious system that gradually evolved out of the cultural elements of society. It had a dramatic point of beginning.  There are no traces of its roots in either Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece or Rome. Prior to the spring of A.D. 30, Christianity did not exist. It had been in a state of preparation for the more than three years that spanned the ministries of John the Baptizer and Jesus of Nazareth.  As a matter of fact, even though the Mosaic system was designed to prepare the way for the coming of Christianity (Gal. 3:24-25), the religion of Jesus was so strikingly different from the Jewish, that it aroused the hostility of many Jews for the first forty years of its existence, until A.D. 70.  From the time of its beginning, however, Christianity was a significant religious force, not only in the Mediterranean world, but also in remote corners of the Roman empire. Seemingly, it came from nowhere; and yet, very soon was everywhere. How did that happen?

A fundamental logical principle proclaims: Every effect must have an adequate cause.  What is the cause behind the origin of the Christian religion? There must be some reasonable explanation for the abrupt genesis of this movement. If no satisfactory answer can be found in naturalism, one must look to a supernatural cause as an explanation.

A Religious Explosion

For some reason the religion of Christ exploded in the first century. Jesus had only a handful of men (the apostles). From this tiny group came the Christian movement.  On the day of its birth the community of believers consisted of at least of 3,000 persons (Acts 2:41). If the numeral 3,000 constituted only those immersed that day, and not those disciples previously baptized by John the Baptist (Matthew. 3:5-6) and the Lord's disciples (John 4:1-2), the total was significantly larger. Not long after, the number of saints was computed at 5,000 adult men (Acts 4:4), not to mention the thousands of women who  were added to the church.

It has been estimated that by the time Stephen was martyred (Acts 7:60), the Jerusalem church consisted of no fewer than 20,000 souls. This represented more than one-third of the estimated 55,000 citizens in Jerusalem at that time.  Beyond that, the gospel rapidly spread from Palestine into Africa (Acts 8), Syria (Acts 9), Asia Minor (Acts 13ff), and finally into Europe (Acts 16ff).  Paul, whose missionary journeys equaled about 12,000 miles, evangelized from Jerusalem to Rome.

Clement of Rome (c. A.D. 95) says that Paul reached "the boundary of the west" (1 Clement 5), which could be an allusion to Spain. Both Irenaeus and Tertullian  confirm the presence of Christians in Spain in the 2nd century A.D.  Christianity swept over the Roman empire like a tidal wave. The New Testament pays tribute to this phenomenal growth. The Christians were charged with having "turned the world upside down" (Acts 17:6). Their "sound went out into all the earth" (Romans 10:18); and was "bearing fruit" everywhere (Colossians. 1:6).

Historian Will Durant argued that by A.D. 300, a quarter of the eastern Roman empire was Christian, and about one twentieth of the western. .It has noted that studies of the catacombs beneath the city of Rome (about 600 miles of galleries) contain somewhere between 1,750,000 and 4,000,000 "Christian" graves. It is estimated that in the middle Empire at least twenty percent of Rome's population  was made up of Christians, and at times the percentage was greater even. The catacombs represent ten generations of believers. This would suggest that the city of Rome itself had somewhere between 175,000 to 400,000 Christians, for each of the ten generations represented!

The testimony of Tertullian  is most dramatic: "Men proclaim that the state is beset with us. Every age, condition, and rank is coming over to us. We are only of yesterday, but already we fill the world"  We need to remember that this growth was achieved under the most adverse circumstances. Again, the question cries out for an answer: What was the cause for this amazing growth? What natural circumstances can account for this?

We must also remember that  the initial impact of the gospel was among the Jews. Many thousands of Jews converted to Christianity. And it is an indisputable historical fact that the Jews were strict monotheists. To them, there was but one deity. And yet, without controversy is the fact that Jesus made the claim of being divine (cf. John 5:18; 8:58; 10:30). Surely only the strongest sort of evidence would persuade a Jewish mind to acknowledge the humble Nazarene as "God" (cf. John 20:28). 

An Unlikely Place of Origin

Consider the place from which Christianity took its rise. The movement was established in the city of Jerusalem in that rather obscure country called "Palestine".  Palestine hardly merited any attention in the first century.  This tiny land was only about 150 miles from north to south. From Jaffa to Jericho, west to east, it is only about 45 miles in width. The land encompassed about 10,000 square miles, smaller than the state of Massachusetts.

In 63 B.C. the Roman commander Pompey conquered Jerusalem and the Jews came under the rule of Rome. The Jews of the first century were a dangerous people. In A.D. 49/50, Claudius Caesar expelled 20,000 of them from Rome (cf. Acts 18:2).  The Jews had the disillusioned expectation of a "political messiah" who would overthrow the iron fist of Rome (cf. John 6:15) and reestablish an "Israel" reminiscent of David's era. Bands of Hebrew cutthroats (called sicarii, Lat. "daggermen") roamed the land looking for Romans to kill. Palestine was a dangerous place, ready to ignite at any time. Could any ordinary man, seeking to establish a purely spiritual regime (cf. John 18:36), possibly be successful in this volatile environment?

The  point is this: It was a time of extreme unrest, and Canaan was an unlikely place from which to produce the world's most influential religion.  How did, therefore, such a powerful force derive from such a humble and troubled background?

An Unlikely Leader

Jesus Christ, viewed as a leader from a purely humanistic vantage point, possessed none of those traits normally associated with the formation of armies or empires. He was not physically appealing. "He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him" (Isa. 53:2, NASB). There is not a line about his physical appearance in the New Testament. 

In his famous speech on St. Helena, Napoleon exclaimed: "I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ, and the founders of empires and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and any other religion the distance of infinity.  Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires. But upon what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him".

Jesus had no wealth with which to launch a significant movement (Luke. 9:58; 2 Corinthians 8:9). He was reared in one of the most despised communities of his country (see Matthew 2:23; John 1:46; 7:52).  Christ had no formal training (John 7:15). Even his own people had little regard for him (John 1:11; 7:5; 6:66). And yet, somehow, he changed the world forever.

The following tribute is sometimes credited to Phillip Brooks, who wrote the hymn, "O Little Town Of Bethlehem."    "He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman, He grew up in another village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty.  Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn't go to college. He never visited a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself.  He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.  While He was dying, His executioners gambled for His garments, the only property He had on earth. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central figure of the human race.  All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life"

Christian Intolerance: An Unpopular Concept

It was common ideology and practice in the Roman world to tolerate, and even accommodate, varying elements of society. The historian Edward Gibbon observed that in the world of the Caesars, most different and even hostile nations embraced, or at least respected, each other's superstitions.  The Christians, however, did not go with the flow. They flexed their spiritual muscles and would not bow to the pressures of paganism. They taught that the truth was associated exclusively with Jesus of Nazareth, (Acts 4:11-12). Theirs was a "one Lord, one faith..." system. A line was drawn in the sand which could not be compromised.  The popular religions of Roman society catered to the basest of human passions. For example, according to the ancient geographer, Strabo (8.6.20), in Corinth 1,000 priestesses or slave girls of the Temple of Aphrodite were employed in religious harlotry, which was one of the city's chief sources of revenue.

But Christianity went against the grain of society, forbidding all sexual activity except that authorized within the bounds of monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Paul's first Corinthian letter emphasizes this repeatedly. How could Christianity challenge this licentious lifestyle and be so successful?  The answer is clear: it had a power that cannot be explained in human terms!

Christianity: A Dangerous Proposition

Being a Christian was very dangerous  in the Roman world. Christianity had barely begun when persecution became a bloody reality. The book of Acts presents a stark picture of the violence which was inflicted upon the new believers. Peter and John were imprisoned (Acts 4:3; 5:18), Stephen was stoned (Acts 7:54ff), and James was killed (probably decapitated) with the sword (Acts 12:2). Some of the persecution Paul endured is vividly summarized in 2 Corinthians 11:24ff. Tertullian would later say that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the kingdom."

In A.D. 112, Pliny, governor of Bithynia, sent a letter to the emperor Trajan, inquiring as to how to deal with Christians.
"I ask them if they are Christians. If they admit it I repeat the question a second and a third time, threatening capital punishment; if they persist I sentence them to death" (10.16.3 as cited in Bettenson, p. 7).  The demanding question has to be this: Why would thousands of early Christians allow themselves to be so abused, stoned, decapitated, sewn into animal skins and thrown to wild beasts, crucified, burned alive, etc.? Was it all for a myth? Some religious hunch?

Conclusion

If it is true that every effect must have and adequate cause.  What possible natural explanation is there for the success of the early church? No theory, grounded strictly in ordinary events, can explain it.  What is reasonable is this: Those early believers had witnessed the miracles that Jesus and his apostles performed. Carefully examining the evidence,
they knew that no person could work those "signs" unless empowered by God (John 3:1-2). Too, the Lord himself had been raised from the dead, and observed by many witnesses during that forty-day span between the time of  his resurrection and his ascension back into heaven (Acts 1:1-3; 10:40-41; 1 Corinthians 15:1-8). It was, therefore, on the basis of these well-established, historical facts that the Christian movement was born. Its amazing commencement and expansion was divinely orchestrated!

So what does this mean to us today?  It means that we can have confidence in what the Word of God teaches.  It means we can grow even if others consider us to be a sect or cult like the Jews in the first Century thought of  Christianity.  It means that it is possible, with committed people to take the gospel to all creation.  It means that even Granby, Missouri, a very unlikely place by the world's standards, could be a place for a religious stronghold.  It means that you and I, can be leaders of a renewed commitment to Christ, even if no one else in the world wanted to be.  It means that no matter how unpopular the truth becomes in America or the rest of the world we can proclaim it and not be ashamed to call ourselves Christians.  It means no matter how dangerous it becomes to be a Christian that you and I are up to the task.  We can be just like those early Christians that faced severe persecution and death, and faced it with determination to remain true to our Savior.  Do we want there to be a Christian explosion, today, like there was in the first century?  If so we need to be willing to do what the early church did!  We need to be willing to go where they went!  We need to be willing to say what they said!  And we need to be willing to face what they faced!  If you and I are willing to do that, we too can be part of something that will defy any natural explanation, because God will be with us and with God's help, (Philippians 4:13), we can do anything.

Invitation

If you understand that Jesus is the Son of God, that you have sins that you must rid yourself of, are willing to confess Christ before this audience and want to be baptized for the remission of your sins, you can do so and become a part of God's family this very morning.  If you are a Christian who has strayed away, perhaps you may have forgotten what an awesome family you became a part of when you were baptized.  If you want to re-energize your spiritual batteries because of some fault of your own and need the prayers of this congregation we can help you with that as well.  Won't you come now, what ever your need as we stand and as we sing.

Sermon prepared by Pat Cowden.  January 16, 2005