Christianity Was Counter Cultural

In reading the history of Rome, it's interesting to find that the Roman Empire's most marked characteristic was tolerance. Does that sound familiar, friend? Because of that, you would think that early Christianity and Roman society would have gotten along together, but the pagan society was going in one direction, and Christianity was going in the other direction, and when they met, there was a clash because Christians swore allegiance to Christ as Lord of their lives. Everything else was expected to be subservient to Him.

They said, if you expect to be saved, you must conform to Christ's way of life, and the Romans resented that. The Christians were charged with being the most unsocial of all people. They came to be considered odd and hated and counted as enemies of society because they were simple and modest in their dress.

They would not go to the games and feasts, and they condemned the people for their popular forms of amusement and pleasure. The people dreaded them because the Christians refused to sacrifice to the gods. Therefore, pagan society feared the wrath of their gods because the Jesus followers did not sacrifice to them.

If the crops failed, or if the Tiber River overflowed, or the plague came, the cry was, the Christians to the lions. Yet, the Christians were helpful to all who were in trouble. They stayed and nursed the sick during the plague when others fled, and the Christians were known for living moral lives, but the straw that broke the camel's back was when high persecution came to all believers because the Roman government made an edict that all men's loyalty should be to Rome, and they required that everyone appear at certain public places and there burn a pinch of incense to the emperor and say Caesar is Lord.

But this, the Christians considered emperor worship, and they refused to do it. They would worship Christ alone as their king. This enraged the emperor, and he commanded government authorities to seek them out, arrest them, spoil them, confiscate their goods, and punish them by death.

They were sent to their deaths because instead of saying Caesar is Lord, they said only Jesus is Lord. As a protective measure, many sought refuge in the secret recesses of the underground tunnels of the sand pits, and it was there the church went underground with their shovels and picks, and they fashioned rooms and chapels and barren places known as the catacombs, which became the only safe retreat for the Christians, kind of like the underground church in China today that faces high persecution from the communist government. Beneath the streets of Rome today are six million persons buried in about 60 catacombs.

Along the walls and ceilings of the cubicles are paintings of Bible characters like Moses striking the rock, David, Noah, or Jonah. In each case, they represent a miraculous deliverance by God. The archaeologist De Rossi discovered in 1885 a cubicle closed by a marble slab on which were engraved these words, Marcus Antonius Rastustus made this sepulture for himself and his own who were confident in the Lord.

So it was in the early church where there was no compromise with society like we have in the western church today, we just blend in with a godless pagan society today because we talk like them, we act like them, we look just like them. I don't know if God's going to bring revival to America or high persecution to the American church, and maybe revival will emerge out of the ashes of that persecution, but either way, I know this, God will get the glory.