For additional notes and resources check out Douglas’ website.
EVANGELISM IN THE SECOND CENTURY
- Challenges to evangelism
- Apostles now gone – tendency to get more and more involved in disputes
- Persecution: from Jewish to Roman
- False teachers (Marcionites, Gnostics, Montanists)
- Evolving priesthood (spectator shift)
- Success!
- Other nations, but little work outside the bounds of the Roman Empire.
- Church of the East (per comments in previous podcast)
- Continued to reach all strata of society (women, slaves – who even served in leadership, and intellectuals – like Justin Martyr)
- The martyrs greatly inspired others.
- By 200, up to 1-3% (my guess). By 300, perhaps 10% of Empire.
- Learn more about this from the main AIM Church History series (2000 years in under 10 hours) and the Early Church History set (about 7 hours).
Conclusion
- We can't always imitate their methods, or recreate the culture of the first 2 centuries, but we can imitate their faith.
- As in 1 Corinthians 11:1, imitation relates to following Christ, not necessarily methods…
- As Tertullian put it, around 200 AD, “The blood of the martyrs is seed.”
- They spoke out, because they believed they had something worth sharing.
