REV2023-06
230419AM
We get a peek in Revelation 2, at what lies ahead during the Tribulation when God says the Antichrist PREVAILS against the saints. There is a countless multitude that gets martyred for Christ.
The Near-Extinction of Christianity: The closest Christianity ever came to being wiped out was during the reign of the emperor Diocletian.
He administratively went through the empire and found an anomaly, a group of people that didn’t behave the way they were supposed to.
They didn’t worship the emperor like everyone else, they didn’t visit the pagan temples and engage in sexual immorality, and they didn’t sacrifice to the Greek pantheon of gods that so dominated the way of life.
They were anomalies, and so Diocletian decided to get rid of them.
First, he went through and found the meeting places, anywhere the church gathered together and tore them down.
Then he went in and arrested the Christian leaders, killing every one of them he could find.
Then he searched out and destroyed every copy of the Scriptures he could get his hands on so that not a single, complete copy of the Scriptures survived from before the fourth century.
Diocletian came closer to exterminating Christianity than any other emperor, and there were at least thirty of them that tried.
This was just beginning at the time that John was writing down the Revelation of Jesus Christ, and in the midst of this persecution, the struggling believers at Smyrna receive a letter from Jesus.
A Short History of Early Church Persecution
I’d like to give you a sanctified mind’s analysis of Church History: something that they could never get on Google.
The reason I share with you the background details of each passage we study is to show it to you through the lens of Scripture, and with my own lifetime analysis of these facts, what is vital to increase our understanding. That is actually one of the elements of expository preaching, which is my lifelong pursuit.
Church History records three notable waves of persecution from the Roman Emperors:
Wave #1: Emperor Nero (54-68 AD) This persecution was sporadic and limited mainly to Rome, sweeping up Paul and Peter to execution.
Wave #2: Emperor Domitian (81-96 AD) This persecution was wider than Nero’s, across some of the Roman Empire’s provinces, and hitting both the church at Smyrna and exiling John to Patmos.
Wave #3: Emperor Diocletian (284-305 AD) This persecution was the greatest of any Roman Emperor against Christ’s Church. Diocletian, who was one of the most administrative of all Rome’s rulers, began a systematic purge of Christianity, through an Empire-wide eradication of the Church, and he almost succeeded
Nero, (54-68) (Paul beheaded; Peter crucified upside down.)
(10 total: 250 years!)
