The greeks and Romans had their religion but suddenly most of them started to believe in one god. I was wondering why this happened because I would have thought they didn't believe as they had their own gods.
Responses (4)
One big part of the history was that Christians were very big on reading the scriptures, so outreach always included reading classes. Public jobs needed people who could read and write, so the emperor noticed one day that almost all public employees were Christians. Because he was not stupid, he made Christianity the state religion.
Please remember that religion and faith are different things. One Greek word is translated both 'faith' and 'believing'. Believing is a natural ability; anybody can believe. Faith is a spiritually enhanced ability to believe, and it came by Jesus Christ. So people who talk about "other faiths" do not know what they are talking about. Only Christians have faith, everybody else just has normal human believing.
Religion is made up by men. It has no direct connection to believing. It is quite alright to just pretend to believe. The Christian church was taken over by the Babylon Mystery Religion, which has always grown mainly by absorbing other churches. The BMR did not care what other churches believed as long as they pretended to believe what was handed down by the central authority. People who worshiped statues were ok as long as they named the statue after a Christian saint or an angel or something. Priests of the absorbed churches wore different color robes so they could keep track of who was who. And that is how the so-called Christian church came to the modern age with no resemblance at all to the gospel described in the bible.
In the 19th century Americans started moving west and three institutions went with them. There was vaudeville, traveling entertainment. There was lyceum, traveling education and culture. And there was the itinerant preacher, offering a new style of preaching called "hell fire and brim stone". It was very entertaining, only loosely based on scripture, and pastors didn't even try to compete. Instead they switched to preaching public morality and philosophy. Eventually an entire generation grew up not knowing the first thing about the religion they claimed to believe. That is why most Christian churches don't teach doctrines, and most members don't know what they are supposed to believe.
Jewels Verne: I'm inclined to agree with much of what you have just said. I would add that everyone leans spiritually on some faith or other, even those who are not religious. Their faith is that what they are currently trusting their life to, knowingly or unwittingly, is good enough for them, in this life, and/or the next. Even an atheist has faith in something; science or whatever. What differentiates one faith from another is what a person's faith is placed in.
Aside from that, I have two questions. 1. Why did your second explanation differ so radically from your first? 2. What bearing does a discussion on the 19th century
have on the original question from Believer198?
“It was first in Antioch [Syria] that the disciples were by divine providence called Christians.” (Ac 11:26) It is possible, then, that this name was used as early as the year 44 C.E. when the events surrounding this text occurred, although the grammatical structure of this phrase does not necessarily make it so; some think it was a little later. At any rate, by about 58 C.E., in the city of Caesarea, the term was well known and used even by public officials, for at that time King Herod Agrippa II said to Paul: “In a short time you would persuade me to become a Christian.”—Ac 26:28.
This is actually a big question, and the simple way to answer would be to have you read your Bible. But I'll try to do it this way. God created this universe, which includes this world, and mankind; ultimately, you. The Bible tells us how the first two humans God created rebelled against him, and the relationship they enjoyed was broken. Ever since then, the rift between God and man has grown greater and greater. God has not abandoned man, however, the way man has abandoned Him. God continues to try to reach out to man, but men will not listen. The history in the Bible tells us how God brought about the nation of Israel, and wanted Israel to be a nation that would reveal God to the rest of the world. There were some Jews that loved God, but most of Israel did not. Ok, that right there was most of the Old Testament. Enter now, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Jews would not do the job of revealing God, so Jesus came to do that. After He lived a sinless life, He died on the cross to provide a way for us as individuals to come to God, and begin a relationship with Him. Yes, you're right; the Greeks and Romans had their gods and goddesses, but that kind of worship involved physical satisfaction for the worshipper. Physical satisfaction does nothing for the spirit, though. When Jesus came, He taught something way different: find real love by finding God. Several men decided to follow Him, and He commissioned them to go out and teach this message. When followers of Jupiter, Venus, Diana and all the other false gods
heard this message, they put their trust in God by the thousands, because God, who is real, can do something for your heart, that a false god, who is not real, simply can not do. God still wants to reach out to people today, because what they are doing to find inner peace and satisfaction, simply is not fulfilling their innermost desires. (Please read the Gospel of John, chapter 4.) If you have not already, I hope you will put your trust in God today.