The History of Christianity - John S. C. Abbott (bookstand for reading .txt) 📗

Roman lictor was indeed a terrible ordeal for any one to pass through. Bruised with the lash, and fainting from pain and the loss of blood, they were thrust into a dark, pestilential dungeon in the inner prison; and their feet were made fast in the stocks. The jailer had special charge to keep them safely. The scene which ensued cannot be better narrated than in the language of Luke:—

“And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God; and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed. And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison-doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm; for we are all here. Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway.”

The morning dawned. The magistrates, probably somewhat alarmed in view of the violent measures which they had pursued, sent officers to the jailer with the order, that he should “let those men go.” Paul and Silas were both Roman citizens, and Paul was a lawyer. The Roman law did not allow any one entitled to the dignity of Roman citizenship to be exposed to the ignominy of scourging.131

These Roman citizens, without any form of trial, without any legal condemnation, had been openly scourged in the market-place. Paul therefore replied to the message from the magistrates ordering them to be liberated,—

“They have beaten us openly uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison; and now do they thrust us out privily? Nay, verily; but let them come themselves and fetch us out.”

The magistrates were greatly alarmed when they learned that their victims were Roman citizens. The report of the outrage at Rome would cost them their offices, if not their lives. They therefore hastened to the prisoners, and became suppliants before those whom they had so inhumanly persecuted, entreating them to depart out of their city. Paul made no appeal to the authorities at Rome; he was too busy preaching the gospel to devote any time to personal redress: but the course he pursued throughout that scene of suffering placed Christianity on high vantage-ground in Philippi, and secured for its advocates the protection of law.

These heroic men made no haste to leave the city. Returning to the house of Lydia, they met all the brethren who by their instrumentality had been led to embrace the religion of Jesus, and addressed them in farewell words of solace and counsel. Thus far it appears, from the form of the narrative, that Luke, the historian of the Acts of the Apostles, had accompanied the brethren on this missionary excursion. It is inferred that Luke and Timothy remained a little longer in Philippi, and that Luke did not rejoin Paul for some time.

Paul and Silas set out to cross the mountains to Amphipolis, a city about thirty miles south-west from Philippi: thence they pressed on twenty-five miles, to Apollonia; and thence thirty-two miles farther, to Thessalonica. We have no record how long they stopped at the two first places, or what success attended their preaching there. In this important seaport, the most populous city in Macedonia, Paul and Silas remained for some time. The following is the inspired record of the commencement of Paul’s labors there:—

“They came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: and Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ.”

The preaching of Paul and Silas in Thessalonica resulted in the conversion of many, both of the Jews and the Gentiles. It is recorded that among the converts there were numbered “of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.” In Paul’s two Epistles to the Thessalonians, we find quite a minute account of the sentiments which he advanced in this city. The spiritual reign of Christ, his second coming in clouds of glory with his holy angels, and the endless happiness which his disciples would then inherit, were the themes of infinite moment which inspired his fervid eloquence. The following extract from one of his letters, which he subsequently wrote to the Thessalonians from Corinth, will show the manner in which he treated such themes. Speaking of the second coming of Jesus in the day of his exaltation, he wrote,—

“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”132

This graphic account of the sublime scenes to be witnessed at the second coming of our Lord Jesus agitated the church in Thessalonica, as the Christians there supposed that the coming of Jesus was to be hourly expected. This led Paul to write another letter, in which he corrected that error. In this he wrote,—

“Now, we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering-together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means; for that day shall not come except there come a falling-away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”133

Who the “man of sin” is remains an undecided question. The Protestants have generally applied the words to the Pope of Rome. It will be remembered, that when Jesus took his final departure from his disciples, ascending into the skies in bodily presence before them from Mount Olivet, two angels appeared to them, and said,—

“Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”134

The second coming of Christ, to reap the fruits of his humiliation and his atoning sacrifice in the establishment of his spiritual kingdom, was a prominent theme in the teaching both of Christ and his apostles. The language of Peter upon this subject unfolds, indeed, a scene of wonderful sublimity:—

“This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you, in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance; that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for, since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

“For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water; whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished; but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

“But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up.

“Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”135

These emphatic announcements, that the Lord Jesus, who had risen from the grave and ascended to heaven, would come again in glory with an angelic retinue to establish an everlasting kingdom, were interpreted by hostile or careless hearers to intimate that the Christians had designs against the Roman government, which they intended by revolution to overthrow; that they intended to establish the throne of Jesus upon the ruins of the throne of Cæsar. This charge was brought against Jesus, notwithstanding his reiterated declaration, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

The enemies of Paul and Silas took advantage of this misrepresentation to accuse them of treason against the Roman government. The record is as follows:—

“But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. And, when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Cæsar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus.”136

The commotion in the city was so great, and the peril of mob violence so imminent, that the brethren sent Paul and Silas by night to Berea, an interior town, about sixty miles south-west of Thessalonica. In this small rural city, situated on the eastern slope of the Olympian mountains, Paul found an intelligent, unprejudiced people, who listened gladly to the tidings of salvation which he brought them.

“They were more noble,” writes Luke, “than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily whether those things were so.