Starting from the year 36 also non-Jews can become followers of Christ

As we have said before, in the forty days between His resurrection and His Ascension Jesus gave the apostles further lessons regarding the Kingdom of God on many occasions. He made it clear to them that this kingdom would not be established in their lifetime. He gave them the life-task to go and spread the good news all over the earth. He also promised to send them the holy spirit, power from God, which would help them with their difficult life-work.

In the days of Jesus there was a big celebration which was held seven weeks after the Passover: Pentecost. On this day the Jews commemorated the establishment of the law covenant with JHWH on Mount Sinai. For the Pentecost celebration large numbers of Jews came to Jerusalem every year. This was also the case in the year 33.

On the Pentecost of that year the apostles and other disciples were together in an upstairs room of a big house. Suddenly everybody heard the sound of a hard gust of wind in the room. And tongues of fire appeared over everybody’s head. Everyone felt how God’s holy spirit, God’s motivating force, filled their personalities. Stimulated by this force the disciples went outside and started to preach the good news about God’s Kingdom in the midst of the huge crows which had come together for Pentecost. This preaching was made a lot more successful by a miracle that happened. There were many foreign Jews in Jerusalem that day who did not speak Hebrew. All of a sudden the disciples appeared capable of addressing these people from different countries who spoke different languages in their own tongues. Peter explained to the masses that the coming of Jesus to the earth and Jesus’ acts had been foretold in the Scriptures. He also told the people that Jesus had been resurrected, that He had gone back to heaven, and had sat down on the right hand side of JHWH, His Father. He explained to them that Jesus had poured God’s spirit over His disciples and that this had also been foretold in the Hebrew Scriptures. He managed to convince many people of the truth of his words. They decided to become followers of Jesus right there and then and they were baptized immediately after their conversion. On the very same day. This first large scale attempt to convert people to the Christian faith resulted in no fewer than 3,000 new followers of Christ. They were people from many different nations who, back home, could tell their story and the good news to neighbors, friends and relatives.

In the weeks after Pentecost the disciples went out into the streets every day to tell the good news to everybody who was willing to listen to them. Motivated by the holy spirit which they had received they called upon all people to repent of their sins, to set their hope on God’s Kingdom, to become followers of Christ and to be baptized. Before long the number of baptized followers of Christ, in Jerusalem alone, amounted to over 5,000 people.

Naturally the religious leaders in Jerusalem were not happy with this development. They arrested Peter and John and interrogated them severely with regard to the new faith they were preaching. Convinced that they ought to put an end to this new faith they forbade Peter and John to continue preaching it. But of course the two men completely ignored them.

This made the religious leaders furious and they put the two apostles in prison, but an angel came to set them free. When shortly afterwards they were arrested again they again refused to stop their preaching with the words:” We must obey God, our ruler, more than we must obey people.” Then they were whipped, but this could not stop the either.

In the course of the months the number of followers of Jesus in Jerusalem increased steadily. A very ardent preacher of the good news was called Stephen. His zeal for the spreading of the good news roused a number of Jews to such anger that they took him to the Sanhedrin. But instead of becoming a little more cautious in these hostile surroundings he uttered the most convincing plea of his life and called upon the Jews who were there to be converted to the new Christian faith. This made the people present furious. They took him outside and stoned him to death.

A man who did not throw any stones himself but looked at the spectacle approvingly, was a certain Paul.

Starting from that day a violent persecution against the followers of Jesus broke out in Jerusalem. The Jewish religious leaders were determined to put a definitive end to the new religious movement. The consequence was that many followers of Jesus fled out of the city and spread all over Israel. And of course: wherever they came they zealously tried to convert the people they met.

When it became clear to the chief priests in Jerusalem that the faith in Jesus increased strongly all over the country they decided to send their representatives to as many villages and towns as they could reach to stop this development. In this pursuit they sent the Saul whom we mentioned before to Damascus to capture those who belonged to “The way”.

Paul was originally a Pharisee. He knew the Hebrew Scriptures very well. As a Pharisee he really hated the followers of Jesus and he did not mind traveling abroad (Damascus is the capital of Syria) to track down Christians, to take them with him to Jerusalem and to have them tried by the Sanhedrin. He was a tent maker by trade and he had had the Roman citizenship from the day he was born.

On his way to Damascus he suddenly saw a flash of light descend from heaven and he fell on the ground, blind. During the flash of light the glorified Jesus showed Himself to him and addressed him with the words: I am Jesus, the one you persecute. This event at once converted Paul from a persecutor of Jesus to a follower of Jesus. Because he was still blind, people had to take him by the hand to guide him to Damascus. After three days he got back his eyesight and he was baptized. Then he began to preach the good news very ardently in Damascus until his opponents made this impossible for him. He fled to Jerusalem where the Christian congregation was naturally very afraid of him at first, but at last accepted him as one of theirs. Then he started to preach zealously in Jerusalem as well.

In the year 36 something happened that has been of essential importance for the development of Christianity. Up to that year, roughly the first three and a half years after the death of Jesus, only Jews could be converted to become followers of Jesus. And only Jews could be baptized. In the year 36, three and a half years after His death, Jesus made it known that everybody, including people who were not Jews, could become His followers and be baptized.

In Caesarea, in the far north of Israel, lived an army captain of the Roman legions whose name was Cornelius.

Though he was a Roman he believed everything that Christians taught and he did everything that he had to do according to the Christian faith. Guided by God’s holy spirit he sent servants to Peter with the request to come and visit him. Also led by God’s holy spirit Peter complied with this request. While Peter was busy telling Cornelius and his family about God’s great acts of salvation, God’s holy spirit suddenly fell visibly not only the baptized Jews who were present, but also on the non-Jews who had not been baptized. Peter at once understood the meaning of what was happening: in this way God demonstrated that people of all nations, including non-Jews, could become Christians, could be baptized and could enter God’s Kingdom at the end of human history. When Peter realized this he baptized both the Roman Cornelius and his family. They became the first Christians who did not have a Jewish background.

Back in Jerusalem Peter told all the disciples what had happened and everybody was extremely glad about this new development.

In the years after 36 the number of followers of Jesus increased very quickly, both in Israel and outside Israel, both among Jews and among non-Jews. In a town called Antioch, a few hundreds of kilometers north of Israel in what is now Turkey, the followers of Jesus were first called Christians.

Between 33 A.D. and 50 A.D. there were many periods in which the Christians who lived in Israel were cruelly persecuted. During one of those periods James, the brother of John, was killed.

When Peter was again put in prison by Herod, he was again set free by an angel.