Lord’s Day, Vol. 13 No. 28
The Saviour’s Birth – A Gospel for All the World – Tracing the Movement of the Gospel through Time and Nations
The birth of Christ, the only Saviour of the world, was during the time when Caesar Augustus was emperor of Rome and the nation of Israel was a vassal state of the Roman Empire at the height of its glory. There was peace and no war in the land. The rise of Roman power and the consolidation of Roman rule has for the first time given the Western civilization a pattern of political order. The Romans absorbed and preserved Greek culture and education within a political structure in its vast domain from York in Britain to Alexandria in Egypt, from the Atlantic to the Euphrates. The New Testament Scriptures would be written in Greek to prepare for its dissemination. The scene was set for the rapid propagation of the Gospel to the Gentile world and the consolidation of Christianity fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission to the church to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every nation. The New Testament Scripture recorded the amazing work of the Holy Spirit in empowering the church to preach the gospel all the way to the heart of the Roman Empire so that Christianity became a powerful organized force together with two unifying elements of the Roman Empire – Roman law and State organization even after Rome began to gradually decline in terms of its political influence.
The notion of the “dark” Middle Ages where for a thousand years, the church began to be infiltrated and decline is an incomplete story shrouding the successful propagation and consolidation of the gospel in the life of the nations that received it. In the Foundation Bible Class notes on False Teachings in the church, appendix A, was given the reasons for the decline of the church in the Middle Ages. It was assumed that from A.D. 400 to 1400 the progress of the arts and sciences, and indeed all cultural life, came to a halt and Christianity was on its decline for a thousand years until the “rediscovery” of the literature and art of the ancient Greco-Roman world, the re-discovery of the Greek New Testament Scriptures, leading to the 16th century Protestant Reformation. This is not so!
Between the time of the Reformation and the decline of the Roman Empire, began in the 3rd Century A.D. the Byzantium Empire who was both the last direct heir to the Roman Empire and the first Christian nation. The Holy Spirit’s work in Christ’s true church was unabated fulfilling Christ’s words to His disciples before His passion and ascension to heaven:
John 16:7-12 (KJV) Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
This I believe is the spirit’s intent in the biblical books of 1 & 2 Chronicles to trace the progress of the true church undergirded by the sovereign power of God as opposed to the seemingly dismal account of its human failures recorded in 1 & 2 Kings. It is an encouragement to the church today that God has indeed reserved for Himself seven thousand men who have not bow the knees to Baal! But more than a remnant, the gospel actually took root in the Byzantine Empire. Throughout its long history, Byzantium remained faithful both to its classical heritage and to its Christian precepts. The imperial Court discussed Greek philosophy and recited Homer, had the Greek New Testament Scriptures preserved within its ranks, and sent missionaries to the Near East and converted the Russians. The Byzantines systematized Roman law and patterned their Senate after Rome’s. Typically, the 11th century ruler Irene Ducas styled herself “Empress of the Romans – faithful in Christ our Lord”.
The Byzantines regarded themselves as the chosen people of God. The emperor claimed to rule by divine right and to serve as the spokesman of Heaven’s will; at his coronation a chorus sang “Glory to God who made you emperor”. To dramatize his role, he occasionally mounted the pulpit and preached a sermon to the Court. Artists always portrayed him in mosaics with a halo around his head. But the state, founded by Constantine under the Cross, kept its perspective: Christ’s portrait engraved on Byzantine coins and stamped with the motto, “Jesus Christ, King of Rulers”. [Great Age of Man – A History of the World’s Cultures – Byzantium by Philip Sheerard and the Editors of Time-Life Books]
One of the greatest Byzantine contributions to Western civilization was the clarification and transmission of the essence of Roman law. The Romans had bequeathed to Byzantium a vast body of legal opinion that was frequently antiquated or contradictory. Justinian, the great sixth-century Emperor, reduced this entangled collection to a coherent system. In A.D. 528 he appointed a commission of 10 men who classified the constitution written by various Roman emperors into a single code of 4,652 laws. Another commission produced a 50-volume digest of major decision that had been handed down by authoritative jurists in the second and third centuries, the golden age of Roman law. In civil law, the new system was more efficient and progressive than the ancient Roman statutes it supplanted. Justinian made it easier, for example, to free slaves and to sell land. He guaranteed inheritance rights to widows and reduced the absolute power of fathers over the lives of their children. In the area of criminal law, however, the new system was far sterner than its predecessor. The Christian jurists for the first time made crimes out of heresy and seduction. Heretics who varied from Orthodox practice were barred from holding office and denied their inheritance. A seducer was automatically executed, as was his victim if she willingly submitted; if the girl chaperone encouraged the alliance, molten lead was poured in her mouth. Despite such barbaric provisions, Justinian’s code was so clear and consistent that it later served as the model for the legal systems of most European countries.
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire centred on Constantinople, renamed in 1930, Istanbul, in modern day Turkey, which unlike its Western counterpart had not fallen beneath the weight of Germanic invasions of the 4th and 5th centuries. The Byzantines called themselves “Romans”, not “Byzantines” (a more recent term invented by Western historians). As far as the Emperors and people of Byzantium were concerned, they were simply the ancient Roman Empire in all its glory, still full of life and strength, now sanctified by its adoption of the Christian faith. Charlemagne and the Western Emperors might speak of themselves as the “Holy Roman Empire”, but that title more truly belonged, the Byzantines felt, to themselves. [2000 years of Christ’s Power Volume 2 – The Middle Ages by Nick Needham]
As early as the 6th century, Byzantines’ greatest success were as missionaries of Christianity and civilization came 300 years later in Slavic regions of Eastern Europe. In 863 the King of Moravia asked for a teacher who could preach the Christian faith to his subjects in their own language. A Byzantine monk Cyril evolved a Slavic alphabet and set out to convert the Moravians. Although his attempts with them failed, his followers succeeded among the Bulgarians. By the 10th century other countries, including Russia, had joined the Orthodox fold, and Cyril’s written language eventually became, in modified forms, the basis for the culture of the entire Slavic world. There was a picture of Byzantine missionaries, witnessed by the King and Queen of Bulgaria, baptize a convert in an illumination from a Slavic text.
With the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Turks in 1453, the stage was set for the gospel to be revived in Western Europe a greater propagation of the Word of God during the Protestant Reformation in 1517 through Martin Luther, who was a beneficiary of the missionary endeavour of John Hus of Bohemia.
The revival of Greek ideas during the Renaissance would have been largely impossible had not Byzantine scholars studied and preserved the ancient literature. The Greek New Testament text has been preserved in the church largely through the Byzantine church. This is a broad stroke of movement of the Holy Spirit. With the invention of the printing press and the translation of the Bible to the language of the nations, the gospel affirmed in Western Europe once again. The missionary efforts of Western missionaries and the persecution of the Christians in Europe led to the spread of the faith to America and from there to Asia where we received our faith in the past 75 years. Amen.
The 7am Service
Pray for God’s blessing in The 7am Service. Amen.
Yours lovingly,
Pastor Lek Aik Wee