If you can’t make it this coming Sunday (9:15am, New Minas Baptist Church), you can still watch the first film online for a limited time.  Click here to watch the 1984 film “John Wycliffe: The Morning Star.”

Ye are fond of contention, brethren, and full of zeal about things which do not pertain to salvation. Look carefully into the Scriptures, which are the true utterances of the Holy Spirit. Observe that nothing of an unjust or counterfeit character is written in them. There you will not find that the righteous were cast off by men who themselves were holy. The righteous were indeed persecuted, but only by the wicked. They were cast into prison, but only by the unholy; they were stoned, but only by transgressors; they were slain, but only by the accursed, and such as had conceived an unrighteous envy against them. Exposed to such sufferings, they endured them gloriously. For what shall we say, brethren? Was Daniel cast into the den of lions by such as feared God? Were Ananias, and Azarias, and Mishael shut up in a furnace of fire by those who observed the great and glorious worship of the Most High? Far from us be such a thought! Who, then, were they that did such things? The hateful, and those full of all wickedness, were roused to such a pitch of fury, that they inflicted torture on those who served God with a holy and blameless purpose [of heart], not knowing that the Most High is the Defender and Protector of all such as with a pure conscience venerate His all-excellent name; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. But they who with confidence endured [these things] are now heirs of glory and honour, and have been exalted and made illustrious by God in their memorial for ever and ever. Amen.   (Clement to the Corinthians, Ch.44)

Tune in next week, 9:15 at New Minas Baptist Church!  I said we’d be covering Polycarp, but I jumped the gun a bit.  We still might get to introducing him, though.  In the meantime, you can peruse the rest of Clement’s letter here.

Let every apostle who cometh unto you be received as the Lord.  And let the apostle when departing take nothing but bread until he arrive at his resting-place; but if he ask for money, he is a false prophet. (Didache 11:4,6)

I guess certain forms of televangelism probably wouldn’t have been too successful in the first century.

Hereupon some of the deserters, having no other way, leaped down from the wall immediately, while others of them went out of the city with stones, as if they would fight them; but thereupon, they fled away to the Romans:—but here a worse fate accompanied these than what they had found within the city; [...] there was found among the Syrian deserters a certain person who was caught gathering pieces of gold out of the excrements of the Jews’ bellies; for the deserters used to swallow such pieces of gold, as we told you before, when they came out; and for these did the seditious search them all; for there was a great quantity of gold in the city, insomuch that as much was now sold [in the Roman camp] for twelve Attic [drams], as was sold before for twenty-five; but when this contrivance was discovered in one instance, the fame of it filled their several camps, that the deserters came to them full of gold. So the multitude of the Arabians, with the Syrians, cut up those that came as supplicants, and searched their bellies. Nor does it seem to me that any misery befell the Jews that was more terrible than this, since in one night’s time about two thousand of these deserters were thus dissected.

Josephus, Flavius ; Whiston, William: The Works of Josephus : Complete and Unabridged. Peabody : Hendrickson, 1996, c1987, S. Wars 5.548-552

One of the keys to the way I teach church history is that we don’t really worry much about dates.  BO-RING!  In fact, by the end of the entire study the only dates I want you to remember is just three years.  If you commit these three numbers to memory, you’ll be so far ahead you won’t believe it.  So here they are…

70        325        1517

So remember those three years, and we’ll start on our first Sunday talking about that first one.  If you were a Jew at that time, you would have said that 70 AD was the end of the world!  Again, the class starts on Sunday, September 13 at 9:15am at New Minas Baptist Church.  Hope to see you there!

So don’t get bent out of shape the next time you see someone write “Xmas” or “Xian” somewhere.  Instead, ask them if they know why we use an “X” there.  Might just open up the door to a great conversation about Jesus!