Friday,
April 23, 2021
While Peter and John were speaking to the people, they were confronted by the priests, the captain of the Temple guard, and some of the Sadducees. These leaders were very disturbed that Peter and John were teaching the people that through Jesus there is a resurrection of the dead. They arrested them and, since it was already evening, put them in jail until morning. But many of the people who heard their message believed it, so the number of men who believed now totaled about 5,000. Acts 4:1-4
The experience of the early church included growing like a
supernova, an exploding star. Pentecost
Day saw 3,000 souls baptized and added to the church roll.[1] This short time later
the number was up to 5,000 men. If you
add the men’s households to that count, the first church was a megaforce of
probably 20,000.
Of course, with any substantial explosion, (think nuclear
bombs) there is always great heat, light, and percussive fallout. For Peter and John healing a paraplegic on
the Temple steps was like igniting the fuse.
It set off two explosions; the church grew like an atomic blast
epicenter, and the established religious leaders retaliated by lighting a
backfire of persecution. We read in the
Scriptures and annals of church historians how that season of explosive growth
and rejection by the leaders of the Jewish hierarchy touched-off the Roman
Empire’s obsessive persecution of the church.
An unintended consequence accompanied that attempt to
stamp-out the followers of Jesus – their persecution was like pouring water on
a grease fire; believers fled Jerusalem and travelled all over the known world,
eventually spreading to the very center of persecution, Rome. Paul was sitting in a Roman prison, chained
to the kind of Roman soldiers that put Jesus on the cross. Paul
used those days and nights to witness to, and win many of Caesar’s guard to
faith in Christ. (See Philippians
4:22) How ironic, that the very government obsessed
with destroying Christianity became the place that embraced it.
In the days of Peter, John, James, Paul, and others in the
roll call of the faithful, religious freedom was dependent on the whim of
powerful rulers. In most of the
civilized world today religious freedom is taken for granted. Most prayers you hear (particularly around
July 4th) thank God for that freedom. While I also offer thanks for that, I cannot
shake the uneasiness of knowing that the church, birthed with the blood of
Christ, and matured in revival fires started by persecution, has lost the will
to persevere. Institutionalized by our
love of ceremony and routines of ease, we have managed to quench the Spirit’s
call to passionately labor unceasingly, giving our lives (if called-upon), to
win souls to the Kingdom. Hard times and
growing churches have always been garden mates.
Hard times are like a pottery kiln to the church’s need for fire-finishing. We go through fire to show the majesty of
Christ, and His mastery of eternity. It
is the hard time of winter ice that produces the bloom of spring and harvest of
summer.
As ironic as Paul leading the early church while sitting in a
Roman dungeon, imprisoned by a pagan emperor, and winning souls, even of
Caesar’s houshold, is the church of today, languishing in the Bohemian luxury
of religious freedom, tax exemptions, sewing circles, and yearly antique car
shows with auctions. The only “hard
times” of the church are generally the internal strife we create ourselves, over
whether to have red or blue carpet in the santuary. In the days following the persecutions of
Nero and Domitian, the believers (not the apostles) scattered everywhere
telling people how to be saved. Today
we’re too sophisticated to do that; we’d rather not offend people. Funny, isn’t it? We don’t want to offend, so we don’t proclaim
Jesus. How is that even possible, to
make the leap from what gave power to the early church, to what passes for
being Christ’s disciple today? We manage
to escape the harsh glance of people who consider proclaiming Christ foolish
and offensive, so we don’t go through hard times. But what we suffer in doing that is losing the
very power of God.
For You Today
Let’s let one who understood hard
times and Kingdom power have the last word:
The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God. 1 Corinthians 1:18
You chew on that as you hit the
Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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