How Roman Citizens Needed Christianity
How Christianity was accepted by Roman citizens is very important, since it will shed light on the essence of this religion on which the global civilization of today has been established through the 2000-year long history of Europe and 500-year long history of America.
There were no authentic and universally available Christian Bibles in the Roman Empire after the start of preaching by Paul, Peter, etc. But more and more Roman citizens came to believe in Christianity as time went by. In 393, a Roman emperor adopted Christianity as state religion.
It means in 300 years after the death of Paul and Peter, Christianity never ceased to spread in the society of the Empire. But, there were no authentic Bible and no printing technique to apply to making copies of the Bible, if any. So, Christianity must have spread through preaching by Christian leaders. Something in their preaching must have greatly appealed to Roman citizens.
But these early preachers or priests had to learn the religion by reading manually copied Gospels, since all the four Gospels were written in the first century around Rome. Based on knowledge obtained from reading the Gospels, they delivered their preaching to citizens. Then, what were the most effective elements in the Gospels for making Roman citizens believe in Christianity?
That is the relationship between people and God. Roman citizens must have for the first time known the theory that God was their father in Heaven and they were encouraged to pray to God. This Christian teaching must have been very revolutionary in the ancient world. Christ Jesus said to ask help or anything from God and then they would receive what they wanted if they had faith.
In the ancient world, although there was the concept of gods, there was no clear relationship between gods and men. Hebrews believed that their God guided them and helped them, but they did not specify their God as their father. Roman citizens for the first time learnt that they could pray to God even personally for help. They found a dependable God in the teaching of Christianity. In the society whose order was maintained by military power of the Empire, they had no assurance of their lives and peace of their minds. But Christianity presented God as their father in Heaven whom they could spiritually depend on. So, more and more Roman citizens must have come to believe in Christianity, since there were no other comparable religions.
The Gospels even taught them how to pray to God. Early Christian priests read it by reading manually copied Gospels. And they delivered it to Roman citizens as they read it in the Gospels. If somebody prayed to God of Christ Jesus, he or she would be called a Christian. So, Christianity started to prevail among Roman citizens due to these revolutionary teachings on the relationship between God and men.
Today, scientifically it cannot be proved that God once visited the human society in a form of a man 2000 years ago. Science cannot define the relationship between God and men. But we must be able to find why Christianity prevailed in the Roman Empire in 300 years after Jesus' Crucifixion, death of Paul and Peter, and the fall of Jerusalem through the Jewish-Roman wars.
And, as ancient Roman citizens needed the teaching of Christ Jesus, people of today must need the teaching of Christ Jesus, no matter in what manner, because human beings today are essentially the same as they were 2000 years ago.
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Luk 8:9 And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be?
Luk 8:10 And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.