The results of Peter’s preaching on the day of Pentecost were such as to decide the efforts to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom. Peter was the real founder of the Christian church; Paul carried the Christian message to the gentiles, and the Greek believers carried it to the whole Roman Empire. [1] For some time the believers in Jesus were a sect within Judaism. [2]
There were three paramount factors in rapid spread of early Christianity: [3]
The triumph of Christianity over the philosophic religions and the mystery cults was due to: [4]
Abner represented Babylonian view instead of Hellenic in early church. [5]
Abnerian church was centered at Philadelphia. From there the missionaries of the Abnerian version of the kingdom of heaven spread throughout Mesopotamia and Arabia. It was eventually lost in the Islamic movement. [6]
Pauline church had its headquartered at Antioch. [7] In Antioch Paul’s disciples were first called “Christians.”. [8] Very soon the believers at Antioch were taking up a collection to keep their fellow believers at Jerusalem from starving. [9]
Each Jewish synagogue tolerated a fringe of gentile believers, “devout” or “God-fearing” men, and it was among this fringe of proselytes that Paul made the bulk of his early converts to Christianity. [10] First Roman church had been previously the chief Mithraic temple. [11] Greek writings determined the drift of Paul’s Christian cult toward the West instead of toward the East. [12] The moral backbone of the early Christian church consisted of Christianized Greek proselytes to Judaism. [13] Mithraism was for a time contemporary with, and a competitor of, Paul’s rising cult of Christianity. [14] During the III century A.D., Mithraic and Christian churches were very similar both in appearance and in the character of their ritual. [15]
The one great difference between Mithraism and Christianity, aside from the characters of Mithras and Jesus, was that the one encouraged militarism while the other was ultrapacific. [16] The Christians accepted the empire; the empire adopted Christianity. [17]
Jerusalem was to become the cradle of the early gospel movement. [18] The early Christian church was largely composed of the lower classes and these slaves. [19]
The church at Jerusalem organized under the leadership of Peter, and James the brother of Jesus had been installed as its titular head. Matadormus was treasurer, that rich man who initially refused to be part of the group of seventy evangelists. [20] Fierce persecution against believers in Jerusalem scattered believers to the ends of the earth. [21] Persecutions againt Christians very much resulted from the use of the term “kingdom”. [22]
At first they baptized in the name of Jesus; it was almost twenty years before they began to baptize in “the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. [23] Remembrance Supper originated as a version of Passover ceremony. [24]
The people and ideas that most influenced the beginnings of Christianity were: