What happened to the 1st Century Church?By Glenn Dupont

The book of Acts describes an incredibly dynamic, rapidly growing church. Its headquarters was in Jerusalem where it kept growing and multiplying. It spread throughout the Roman Empire and many Jews and Gentiles were converted.


The Judean Church
Jesus had instructed the church in Judea to leave before the destruction of Jerusalem:

When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. Luke 21:20-22

In 66AD the entire Judean church moved to Pella, a free city in the Decapolis, beyond the Jordan. We have this information from Josephus (A.D. 75) as well as several references by Eusebius (325 AD), including that they were commanded by a divine revelation. There were also several references by Epiphanius (375 AD).including a reference about a false sect being there.

This was no small group, we are dealing with the epicenter of Christianity that had been growing for 40 years. There were thousands of people, the entire church in Jerusalem, its leadership and also all the converts of Judea.

So what happened to their history? What happened to their writings? Eusebius and Epiphanius got their information somewhere, but where? They were aquainted with this information but we find no earlier record of this. We have a whole generation of missing Christian History.


The Church of the Dispersion

Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles and through his work many Gentiles were converted. They were not required to follow the Law of Moses, but they were converted to a Hebrew religion. It was a Hebrew movement from the province of Judea, it was based on the Hebrew scriptures and the Hebrew Messiah. The word Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah. Paul was a Hebrew and taught them the Old Testament scriptures and how to interpret them.

There were also many Hebrew converts in these churches. Paul frequently addresses both groups; the Book of Hebrews and Peter’s writings are addressed to the Jewish converts. They knew Hebrew culture, history and had an excellent knowledge of scripture.

Three-quarters of the verses in the Book of Revelation are direct allusions to the Old Testament passages, therefore the churches in Asia Minor were well-versed in the Old Testament scriptures.


Historical Gap

So what is the History of this movement? There is a historical gap between the events of 70AD and the first few writings of what we call the Church Fathers at the being of the 2nd Century. There is a whole generation of missing Christian history. Why was this not preserved? There was no problem preserving the 27 books of the New Testament!


The Disappearance of Hebrew Christianity

But to me the most important question is what happened to Hebrew Christianity? What happened to the 2nd generation of Hebrew leadership? What happened to those Gentiles who were taught how to understand and interpret the Hebrew Scriptures? Why are all the church Fathers Greek and Latin? Why, all of sudden, there is not even one early Church Father that has an understanding of how to interpret scripture?

Milton Terry in his book Biblical Hermeneutics spends seven pages analyzing the hermeneutics of the different 2nd century Church Fathers. (pp. 629-686) His conclusion was that controversy and heresy prevailed and that no well-defined principles of scripture exposition were anywhere recognized or applied.

In his next chapter, where he covers the period up to the Dark Ages (pp 637-660), he concludes that we are not to look to the ancient fathers for models of exegesis. The Church Fathers had no clear idea of how to understand the Bible. This does not at all match up with the leaders and members of the apostolic movement. Nor does it follow the continuity of 1500 years (from Moses onward) of being able to understand scripture. How could this have happened?


A Different Gospel

When we examine the First Council of Nicaea (325 AD), where the religion of the Church Fathers is formalized, we find an ecclesiastical organization where a gathering of Bishops in charge of their dioceses come together to create an official church creed. They decided the technical aspects of Christology, when to celebrate Easter, and condemn heretics. It doesn’t at all sound like the teaching of Jesus nor does it bear any resemblance to the early church. Furthermore, as we follow its evolution, it does not produce a wonderful new age of peace, spirituality and enlightenment but, beginning in 476, it spawns the dark ages with all its atrocities.


Conclusion

It is obvious that what we see in the second century is a different movement than what is in the book of Acts. But so far history is silent as to what happened after 70AD until the beginning of the second century, and even beyond that point few historical details are found. Why is there no information? There are two probable reasons for this.

1. The post-apostolic writings of the early Hebrew Christian movement were not preserved or were actually destroyed because they did not agree with what was believed. The Church Fathers disengage themselves from Judaism. We have several very anti-Semitic comments from the Church Fathers expressing their hate for the Jews. Their view was that the Jews had rejected Christ so God rejected them, and the Church was given to the Gentiles. We have plenty of evidence of persecution of heretics and destruction of writings contrary to Church dogma. The lack of existing historical writings is strong evidence that these writings were not in agreement with church orthodoxy. This would be the case if these writings expressed a fulfilled view.

2. If the Apostolic Church taught fulfillment theology then it viewed itself as the last days of biblical Judaism. Once scripture was fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple and sacrificial system; then there was no need to perpetuate the church structure. It had fulfilled the great commission which was to last until the end of the Jewish age.

With the radical differences between the Hebrew apostolic believers and the later Greek / Latin church, the absence of patristic evidence for fulfilled theology actually becomes a point in its favor. The later Greek / Latin church was not the continuation of the Apostolic Church but the development of a totally different movement.

From a fulfilled perspective this makes total sense. In some churches you would have had gentile members who had not learned much scripture and who had not gotten over their Jewish prejudice. It is clear in the writings of the New Testament that it took a lot of effort to correct false ideas and maintain unity.

When scripture was fulfilled the Church understood that it had accomplished its mission and it abandoned formal church structure. Some Gentile members would not properly understand this change, and would view the destruction of Jerusalem as God’s rejection of the Jews and his giving the church to the Gentiles. Therefore, you end up having groups–focused on church structure–that are totally Gentile, anti-Semitic and ignorant of scripture.