The coming into the world of the Son of God was an event without parallel in the history of mankind. Even from the viewpoint of the secular historian, it is an event which has had tremendous consequences, for it changed the current of history. The Christian historian sees it from another aspect. He views it in relation to the purposes and counsels of the Author of all things. He looks at it in the stupendous context of eternity, in comparison with which the history of man shrinks into insignificance. Even the physical universe, vast and wonderful as it is, is to pass away, and all the doings of the great and mighty of this world will finally be lost in eternal oblivion. To view Christianity as a factor in human history—to view it even as the greatest factor — is one thing; to realize that it transcends history itself is another matter altogether. But this is the true viewpoint, for its origin is in the counsels of God in eternity past, while its effects are to endure to the glory of God and the blessing of millions of His creatures in eternity to come.
In the awful darkness of a world sunk in superstition and idolatry, vice and cruelty, Christianity arose like the dawn of a new, glorious day. The divine fiat “Let there be light” that went forth to dispel the darkness that once covered the earth had its counterpart in the first century of our era. Well might the angel who appeared to the shepherds in the hills of Judea on that memorable night say, “I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).
The brief but pregnant Pauline phrase “the testimony of the Christ” (1 Cor. 1:6 JND) is an apt definition of Christianity. Sustained by a power no less than that of the Spirit of God, this testimony has continued down the ages. The world has never received it or the world would not be what it is today. Opposed by the powers of hell, resisted by human potentates, insulted by the worldly, ridiculed by the wise, flattered by imitators, it has flourished during nineteen centuries. Strongest when most opposed, weakest when smiled on by the world, it has triumphed over all obstacles because, although perpetuated in frail human vessels, its light is divine and its power not of men.
To trace, if briefly, this history, to follow its vicissitudes, its sufferings, its triumphs, its waxing and waning, to learn something about the faithful witnesses who have labored and suffered and ofttimes died for the “faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3), and to see how this precious heritage has, by divine grace, been preserved to us down to this day is our object in the following pages.
Christendom is not Christianity. The Lord once likened the kingdom of heaven to a grain of mustard seed, which is exceedingly small, but when grown, it becomes a tree in which the birds of the air can find roosting places (Matt. 13:2430). From the gospel seed there has grown up a vast religious system which bears the Christian name but is, in character, no different from the world — a system, indeed, which has become one of the features of the world and which has harbored, and still harbors, all kinds of evil — a system which Satan has used to destroy men’s souls and which ambitious men have used to glorify themselves instead of God.
It is not, however, the history of Christendom we wish to trace, but of the true faith which Christendom has often opposed. Yet the two cannot be entirely disentangled, for while in the first three centuries Christians had to struggle against heathen persecution, thereafter the opposition came from those within the pale of Christendom—from the religious leaders themselves. Some were misguided zealots; some simply wolves in sheep’s clothing. Behind this lay the cunning artifices of the devil, whose intention was to corrupt what he had failed to destroy. Yet what he could not corrupt became, through his influence, the object of hatred and persecution.
The Lord had given warning of this admixture of the false and the true in the clearest terms when He uttered the parable of the wheat and tares (Matt. 13:24-30) in which He made it perfectly clear that the enemy would introduce among true believers those who, like the tares, bore a mere outward resemblance to the true but in themselves were false and worthless. But the words of the divine Author of the faith could not fail. “Upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). His Church continues to this day, outwardly lost in the confusion of sects and systems but still one body composed of every true believer, indwelt by the one Spirit.