WE must not omit to bear in mind that in the times of the earliest days of the Church of God, the Gentile world was in a state of the highest civilization, mental advancement, and intellectual progress, and also in a condition of the grossest immorality. This important fact should be remembered in relation to the efforts of our own day to advance an education which leaves out God. The gods of the Romans were mythical existences, frequently little better than human passions deified, while the religious beliefs of those old conquerors of the world were in large part colored by or acquired from nations that had preceded them, or which they had conquered. As to the moral nature attributed to their gods, the story of St. Agatha, in the third century, when brought before her pagan judge, is to the point. She worshipped Him who is holy, Him who is true, and during the interrogation of the judge, as to her religion, she asked him whether he could wish to resemble Jupiter, or that his wife should imitate Venus.
The immoralities attributed to these deities were such, that the judge ordered St. Agatha to be beaten for insulting him by her question! Nevertheless, St. Agatha was condemned because she would not bow to Jupiter and Venus, and own them to be divinities, but would worship God alone.
The religious condition of the Gentile in the earliest days of the Church of God was one of subjection to demon-power through false gods, and immorality of unmentionable horror. We must acknowledge, therefore, that, whether regarding the manner of life or the worship of the Gentile, the Church of God, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, could only absolutely refuse every kind of thing that characterized the Gentile spirit of that day.
Let us try to conceive what heathendom when in power is like—not an easy task in a Protestant land. The home is dedicated to special demons and their idols. The food eaten is offered to idols, or has some religious thought connected with it. The priestly class, which serves the power the idol represents, exercises a superstitious control over every one. The temples, with their processions and holidays, offer a great part of the interest and the entertainment of the hour, while the art and wealth of the district are largely connected with its religion. The whole life of the people is therefore colored and governed by its gods, and the idea of the individual obeying his conscience, as a Protestant would understand it, could hardly exist.
When a man became a Christian he broke away from heathenism absolutely, as was said of the Thessalonians; “Ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God" (ch. 1:9), or, as was said of the Colossians; delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son (ch. 1:13).
The surroundings of heathenism touched the Christian in the very details of his home-life.
The markets where, in the ordinary course, he would buy his food, proffered for sale meats sacrificed to demons, and, said the inspired word, " I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils " (1 Cor. 10:2020But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. (1 Corinthians 10:20)), which might be the case by the means of the very food they ate. Then in religious life, the Gentiles were "carried away unto these dumb idols, even as (they) were led” (ch. 12:2). For though the idols might be but wood or stone, and therefore "nothing" in themselves, behind them was the power which "carried away!' and "led" the worshipper.
The evil spirits knew well what the holy power was the apostles possessed. They, at least, recognized that God was in them of a truth. St. Paul and his companions at Philippi were followed for days by what would now be termed "a medium," a young woman possessed by a spirit. She was the telephone wire, as it were, for communicating with the unseen world of evil spirits; her masters, holding intercourse with some of the “hosts of wickedness " through her, and gaining much money through her by soothsaying. She cried out after the servants of God, declaring to the heathen of Philippi, who they were, and what their mission was. Solemn, but touching, was her cry, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, which skew unto us the way of salvation" (Acts 16:1717The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which show unto us the way of salvation. (Acts 16:17)). The extent of the intercourse with the world-rulers of darkness may be inferred from what transpired in Ephesus, where the word of God prevailed so mightily among the heathen, that the books of magic and charms burned by the converts amounted in value to fifty thousand pieces of silver
The power vested in apostolic and other hands astonished the heathen; they had no conception whence it came, or whose it was, At Lystra—where the poor heathen cripple believed the Word, as Paul preached, and was healed by the apostle—the people, seeing the miracle, regarded Paul and Barnabas as their gods come down among them in the likeness of men. Then the priests of Jupiter brought forth oxen with garlands to sacrifice to these servants of the living God, and only with much effort on the part of the apostles were they restrained from their purpose.
Such incidents assist us to realize what the Gentile world was like in the early days of the Church of God.
It was probably seven years after Pentecost that “the Holy Ghost fell on “the centurion and the company assembled in his house to hear St. Peter preach. The word went forth amongst the Jewish believers, “on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost”; “He fell on them as on us at the beginning” (Acts 16:1515And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us. (Acts 16:15)). A few years later the mighty powers of the Holy Ghost amongst the Gentiles, with the grace of God that brings salvation to all men, was witnessed by the word prevailing in many of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, as we read in the book of Acts. And tradition assigns to India, Arabia, Scythia and Parthia evangelic triumphs through the labors of Saints Bartholomew, Andrew, Matthew and Philip. We may be sure the apostles obeyed the Lord's word, "Go ye into all the world and disciple all nations," and that they went. We have also to remember the order the Lord had laid out for their mission, "Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth " (Acts 1:88But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. (Acts 1:8)), and by the record of the Acts we find that this order of service was maintained.
The truth of Christianity extended even to Cesar's household, as well as to the poor slaves whose lives were held at the will of their pagan masters. Some few of the great and the noble were called, as Dionysius, of Athens, the Areopagite, and thus the truth of God penetrated in the very heart and centre of paganism.
We have, then, now before us the Church of God in the midst of heathendom, invested with divine power, indwelt by the Holy Ghost, and full of evangelic spirit to win other hearts out of heathen darkness for Christ the Lord. The Philippians were a church zealous for Christ and the gospel for many years; the word of the truth of the gospel brought forth its 'holy fruit in Colosse, and increased there; much people was brought to God in Corinth, and also in Ephesus; and the Ephesians, once so terribly under the power of evil spirits, were addressed as soldiers of Christ wrestling "against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."
An illustration is afforded in the fourteenth chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians of an unbeliever coming into their midst, “where the whole church was assembled together," and of his sense of God being among them. The Holy Spirit, acting in the company of Christians, so convicted the heathen, that he could but openly acknowledge the divine power present, which unveiled himself to himself in the presence of the Holy God. We may safely assume that many of the heathen were converted to God by such means, as well as by the preaching of the word through the divinely-sent evangelists.
The records of the early work of the Church abound in testimony to the energy of God the Spirit; indeed, we might almost term the book of the Acts of the Apostles, the book of the Acts of the Holy Spirit of God through the apostles and others. We survey the dark places of the heathendom, and behold here and there, like stars on a gloomy night, the assemblies of Christians shining for Christ as light in the world, holding forth the word of life. In a marvelous way God Himself had caused the light, the love, the life of the Christian filled with the Spirit to be seen on earth.
The hand of persecution was not raised against these early churches in the fierce spirit of later years; each local church had its story of persecution to tell, we cannot doubt, for many of the epistles bear testimony to these afflictions; but at the beginning, the Gentiles did not, as the Jews, seek to root out Christianity from the earth. The first persecutions of Christians were due to the fury of Jewish hatred to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and at the beginning, to the Jews was frequently due the anger of the heathen against the Church. The heathen rulers often regarded the Christians merely as a sect of the Jews, and it was not until the Church of God had increased considerably in numbers, that it was exposed to systematic persecution at the hands of the Gentiles. So grew the word of God and prevailed in those early days.