# data[].attributes.body
Christ was sent into a world in which the good news of the gospel could travel quickly. By the time of Caesar Augustus, much of the known world was under Roman rule, and two centuries of peace and order had begun.

Not since the Tower of Babel had there existed such a "one world" politically and culturally. God also planned the timing when the gospel of Jesus Christ would be welcomed. By the beginning of the first century A.D.

By the time of Jesus birth, many Jews were scattered throughout the Roman Empire. These Jews gathered at local places of worship known as synagogues, where they read the Old Testament Scriptures in Hebrew and Aramaic and sometimes even from the Greek Septuagint.

# data[].attributes.body
By the end of the Apostolic age, the church was a movement of some 500,000 believers meeting in local assemblies scattered throughout parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe. The fires of fierce persecution now descended upon the church as Satan hurled his venom against the Christians in a vain attempt to squelch their witness for Jesus Christ.

The First Two Persecutions

Under Nero. In A.D. 64, during the reign of the demented and depraved Nero (A.D. 54-68), the Christians experienced the first major persecution by the Romans.

After a fire devastated Rome, Nero deceitfully blamed the Christian community; consequently, multitudes of believers were persecuted.

The tenth, and greatest, persecution came under the "reforming" emperor, Diocletian

(284-305). Diocletian and his co-emperor Maximian proclaimed themselves officially Dominus Noster ("Our Lord"), and Diocletian demanded worship as Jupiter incarnate, the father of the gods.

# data[].attributes.body
The Faith Defended

After the close of the Apostolic Age

(A.D. 96) God raised up a number of godly and able men to expound on the Scriptures, defend the faith, and champion the cause of Christ. These preachers and teachers were called the church fathers. Their writings are important because they illustrate how Christian life, thought, and worship developed in the early church.

Many early Christian writers were apologists [a•pol'a• jists], those who attempted to reasonably defend Christianity against pagan defamations (1 Pet. 3:15). Christian apologists of the early church period included Aristides [ăr'I•stí' dez: c. 140] and Justin Martyr (c. 100-165). Each presented a lengthy Apology to Antoninus Pius, which the emperor probably never read.

Other church fathers were busy fighting against heresies that threatened to twist true biblical doctrine. Irenaeus (c. 130-200) wrote against Gnosticism [nos ti-siz' am] in his work, Against All Heresies.

The Faith Defined

Creeds and councils. To combat the spread of heresies, the early Christians wrote statements of their beliefs in the form of creeds (Latin, credo, "I believe"), or confessions of faith.