33. The Early Church After Acts
"… I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it …" (Matthew 16:18 ESV). What did Jesus mean by these words? Clearly, the "gates of hell" are metaphorical for death and destruction, but how do these words best fit what we know of the early Church and its subsequent history? The answer is already beginning to appear in the Book of Acts. Luke shows that two attacks were mounted against the early Church almost from its inception. These two "gates of hell," to use Christ's metaphor, were the destruction of Christian believers through persecution and the destruction of Christian beliefs through heresy and false teaching.
We know that Christ foretold that his followers would be persecuted (Matthew 10:16-22), and Acts shows that the persecution by outside forces began soon after the Day of Pentecost. We find exhortations to withstand persecution in many of the later New Testament writings, and we know the apostles and many others died as martyrs of the early Church.
But what persecution failed to do to the Church from the outside, heresy and false teaching then began to attempt to do from within. Christ had also foretold that there would be false teachings of Christianity (Matthew 24:4-5), and we see glimpses of this in Paul's letters, such as his warning to Timothy: "…people will not endure sound teaching, but …. will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths" (2 Timothy 4:3–4). We see heresy already among the Jewish Christians (Acts 15:1); and when Paul was first imprisoned in Rome, we read that heresy was occurring in the Gentile church at Colossi (Colossians 1:20-23).
When we turn to the writings of John, the last surviving apostle, we find that by the end of the first century the twin evils of persecution and heresy were rampant enemies of the Church. In the letters to the seven churches of Revelation – which may represent messages regarding conditions extant throughout the Church as well as seven actual congregations – we find persecution (Revelation 2:10) and false teaching (Revelation 2:16, 20) to be major problems. This situation also helps us to understand the epistles of John. Throughout his letters the last living apostle constantly stresses the two qualities of love and truth (for example, 2 John 1:3-7), as these are the spiritual opposites of the two threats of persecution and heresy that were becoming so widespread.
Although the beginnings of these threats to the Church are already seen in Acts, they become ever clearer as we move through the later New Testament writings, and they have continued, of course, to the present day. It is sobering to think that the early Church was threatened so soon by these attacks; and its story certainly remains as a lesson to us today that we must be aware of these ongoing dangers and willing to do what we can to fight them.
We need only look at today's news to see that new persecutions and new heresies arise around the world almost daily. The history of the early Church shows we must never grow complacent about these threats, but that we can also be encouraged. The words of the One who promised the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church cannot be broken. The evils that assailed Christianity from its beginning did not overcome the early Church, and although we must still struggle against them, we know they will not overcome it now.
AFTERWORD
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