Chapter 5.

God Got the Pagan Nations

Ready To Hear the Gospel.

 

Before Jesus began His three and one-half year Ministry in Israel, and before the first Christians began to take the Gospel to Gentile nations, the requisite setting for this outreach to humanity had to be put in place.  Mankind’s history, economies, nations, religious institutions, and political power-structures had to coalesce into the perfect backdrop for the heroic life of Jesus and the birth of His Church.  The Trinity carefully engineered the moment in history when Jesus would clothe Himself in human form and show men and women the way to Heaven.  Paul told the Christians in Galatia ...

... when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son ...  (Galatians 4:4 KJV)

 

The Lord prepared Israel for Jesus’ Ministry, and the Lord got the pagan nations of the ancient world ready to hear the Gospel.  He knew that the Apostles and other early Christians would take the Gospel Message to the world about them.  Tens of thousands of Jews became Christians on or about the Day of Pentecost that followed Christ’s Resurrection.  Whereupon, the unbelieving Jews instigated a severe persecution of those who adhered to the tenets of the New Testament Church.  Christians fled from Israel in droves to many Gentile nations.  Christianity spread rapidly.  To facilitate this expansion, God had modified in advance the infrastructures, governments and cultures of the peoples of that period.

 

 

Pax Romana

 

Jesus came to live among men during an era known as “Pax Romana”.  It began in B.C. 27 and ended in A.D. 180.  Rome ruled a huge swath of the globe in that era.  Its Empire stretched from the British Isles to the frontiers of western Persia and from the southern Germanic regions in the north to the coastal regions on the southern edge of the Mediterranean Sea.  It was a time of relative peace and prosperity.  “Pax Romana” is Latin for Roman peace, albeit a strictly enforced peace.

 

 

The Roman Procedure

For Subjugating Other Nations

   

The goal of Roman warfare was to subjugate more and more territory and people -- to put new regions under Roman rule.  They taxed their subjects to fund their oversight of them, to finance further expansion of the Roman Empire, and to fill the coffers of the treasury in Rome.  If, when they confronted a new principality, the rulers were willing to submit, the Romans would peacefully install Roman overlords and make the existing rulers vassals of the Roman Emperor. 

 

However, if any rulers resisted them, the powerful Roman military would attack them, slaughtering their warriors and destroying their defenses until they gained control of the region.  Then, they would install a Roman overlord and supply him with enough troops to retain control.  They confiscated valuables and shipped them to Rome as war trophies.  Often, the Roman soldiers were allowed one or two or three days to rape the women and girls of the region and to pillage valuables from the homes and other structures of the area.  They would enslave many citizens and capture enemy soldiers and sell them throughout the Empire.

 

Soon after annexing a new region, the Romans would enhance and build roads to and throughout the area.  If the region had a coastline, they would enhance or build ports at strategic sites.  They were motivated by three imperatives.  First and foremost, they were determined to facilitate the rapid movement of troops to and through the region.  They intended to keep the area under their control.  Second, they felt their officers must be able to communicate quickly with Rome and with other officers who might aid them in an emergency situation.  So, their messengers must be able to race along their road network or embark by ship from the region’s ports.  Third, they knew that good roads and ports would stimulate commerce in the area.  By taxing business activities, they would reap added revenues.

 

 

Roman Roads

 

Roman roads were well built and well maintained.  Small parts of them are still with us.  Generally, they were flanked by drainage ditches on both sides.  This kept the surfaces as dry as possible and reduced their erosion by weathering.  Mile markers helped travelers track their progress.  At about ten mile intervals, the Romans built waystations.  These included stables for horses and pack animals.  A government messenger could drive his mount hard and exchange it for a fresh horse at the next station.  If necessary, a messenger could overnight there before resuming his course.  Commonly, local residents would build inns near these stations.  Travelers could stable their mounts and draft animals at these sites, while they slept and ate and refreshed themselves.  These facilities boosted commerce, written correspondence, and tourism.  With reasonable safety, one could travel from Byzantium (Constantinople or Istanbul) to Paris in a few months.  Official messengers traveled much faster.

 

 

Sea Transport

 

Most regions of the Roman Empire bordered navigable bodies of water.  The Romans ruled every coastal zone of the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic coast from Gibraltar to the British Isles, and the coasts of the Aegean Sea, which touches Greece and Turkey.  Its northern border with the hostile Germanic tribes was usually defined by segments of the Rhine and Danube rivers.  And, the Nile gave the Romans access to large portions of Egypt. 

 

So, ships and barges played a vital role in the administration of the Empire.  Often, they were the fastest way to deploy troops to troubled regions.  Certainly, they moved a massive quantity of goods about the kingdom.  At times, they were the speediest way to move correspondence to and from the provinces and Rome.  And, they allowed merchants to make business trips and tourists to survey the Roman world.

 

Of necessity, the Romans maintained a large and effective navy.  They policed the waters and arrested and punished pirates.  They managed the ports.  And, they were involved in military efforts to conquer new territories or to put down rebellions.

 

 

Neighboring Nations

  

In the first and second centuries A.D., the Roman Empire was the largest, commercial market in the world.  Not only did the merchants and residents of the kingdom profit from its stability, but. also, the peoples outside of the realm prospered.  They brought their products to an edge of the Empire and sold them to merchants who distributed them throughout the vast Roman marketplace.  Several well-traveled roads from China, Southeast Asia, India, and Persia brought highly valued goods to the kingdom.  Ethiopians took their products to Egypt or the Middle East and launched them into the Empire.  Tribes and nations around the Black Sea and northward sold their goods to merchants in Greece and Turkey.  Africans brought products to the shores of the Mediterranean.  From there they were sold in all parts of the realm.  The Germanic tribes, north of the Rhine and Danube could connect with merchants along these rivers.

 

Business was good, and the Roman Treasury grew fat by collecting taxes as goods passed by carefully placed toll stations.

 

 

Law and Order

 

As a nation, Rome existed from about 500 years before Christ to about 500 years after Christ.  It began as a republic confined to Italy, and by the time Jesus was born, it was a vast Empire.  Its leaders were consistently concerned about law and order.  They developed systems of policing, litigating and punishing wrongdoers that are echoed in many modern countries.  During the first five centuries of the A.D. era, these practices provided a mostly predictable footing for the provinces of the Roman Empire.  This, too, was good for commerce and allowed the citizenry of the kingdom to live in a mostly peaceful environment.

 

The worst flaw in the Empire’s laws was that many of its emperors demanded to be deified.  And, they persecuted those who would not worship them.  This mixing of religion and government is never proper.  It led to the martyrdom of many Jews and Christians.

 

 

Latin and Greek

 

Increasingly, over the millennium of Roman influence in world affairs, two languages became widely used in commercial, legal and academic cercles.  They were Latin and Greek.  Residents of the provinces still clung to their native tongues, but to thrive in the widespread Roman Empire, they needed to communicate with others.  They knew they could send messages in Latin or Greek, and if the recipient did not know these languages, he or she could hire a local scribe who would decipher them.  These overspanning tongues added cohesiveness to the Empire’s diverse peoples.

 

 

Jews Lived

Throughout the Roman World.

 

About 600 years before Jesus was born, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, conquered Judah and forcibly moved many Jews to Babylon, enslaving them.  A whole generation of Jews grew up there.  They became an integral part of the culture of that region.  As the region came under the control of a succession of sparring warlords, Jews remained there in captivity for seventy years.  When the Persian King, Cyrus, prevailed, he encouraged the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their capital city and their Temple.  Many did, but a large number of Jews remained in his empire.  Some of them held important positions in government, schools, and commercial enterprises.  They did not re-locate to Judah.  Over the years, their vocational responsibilities dispersed them and their offspring over a vast area, from, at least, India to Greece on the northern boundary to Ethiopia on the southern frontier.

 

Much later in history, when the Roman Empire swallowed up most of Europe and the Middle East, many of these Persian Jews moved into it.  And, mercantile Jews of Judah began to conduct business in the Roman world.    Jews were commonly present in Egypt and most of Europe.  In A.D. 70, the Roman army sacked Jerusalem and literally buried it.  They chased most of the Jews out of the Holy Land.  Those they caught, they enslaved and sold throughout the Empire.

 

For these reasons, Jews were dispersed throughout the Roman world.   And, wherever they went, religious Jews continued their worship of God.  When a cluster of ten or more Jewish families settled in a community, they were obliged to build a synagogue there.  So, a far-reaching network of synagogues evolved.  Rabbis circulated from town to town distributing Scripture scrolls, conducting worship services on Sabbath days, educating Jewish youth, and promoting the observance of Jewish holidays and festivals.

 

The spread of Judaism was bolstered by the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek in B.C. 285.  This translation was made by 70 Jewish scholars working in a scholastic center in Alexandria, Egypt.  Most of the Jews living in the Roman Empire could not speak Hebrew, so the new translation was a boon to their efforts to educate their youth.

 

 

The World Was Ready

For the Gospel.

 

Late in March of B.C. 5, the Holy Trinity, having set the stage for the Son of God to assume human form, sent the angel, Gabriel, to announce to Mary of Nazareth that she would soon be the mother of the long-awaited Messiah.  Jesus was born in the closing days of that year, probably at the time of the annual Hanukkah celebration.

               

Herod the Great, a vassal of the Roman Emperor, was the King of Israel at that time.  He tried to snuff out the life of Jesus, after hearing from some wise men from the East that a future king of Israel had been born.  Herod’s advisors told him that the Messiah was supposed to be born in Bethlehem.  So, he ordered the massacre of all the baby boys in that region who were two years old and younger.  Joseph, Mary’s husband, received a warning from God, and he, Mary and baby Jesus fled to Egypt along a Roman road.  When Herod died, the Holy Family returned to Israel, but they traveled a different route , leading to Nazareth. 

 

After Christ’s Resurrection, the Church quickly swelled to include tens of thousands of Jews.  The “true Jews” -- the Jews who were members of the “Royal Priesthood Movement” -- believed the Gospel Message and converted to Christianity.  When the unbelieving, Jewish rulers persecuted these early Christians, they fled from the Holy Land along Roman roads and on ships embarking from ports managed by Rome. 

 

Soon, Apostles and other early Christians left Israel, departing along Roman roads, taking the Gospel to other nations like India, Turkey, Ethiopia, Greece and Italy.  The Apostle Paul -- who was strongly opposed to Christianity -- was converted and called into Christian missionary work as he bolted toward Damascus on a Roman roed, planning to punish followers of Jesus.  After his conversionn, Paul traveled widely through the Roman Empire.  Often, the Scriptures speak of his sea voyages in Roman ships and his pedestrian travels along Roman roads.

 

The infrastructure put in place by the Romans was a gift from God.  It supported the expansion of the New Testament Church.