in his letter to the galatians, paul reveals exactly what jesus told him to do. that i should announce him triumphant among the gentiles. it was a radical mission. he starts preaching there, to gentiles, to pagans and saying, this is a faith that can touch you, and that must have been it must have the jews in the diaspora must have said, my gosh, did we miss something? when did they suddenly make judaism into a universal religion? people listened to paul because he was the perfect man for the job, able to speak to both jews and gentiles in their own language. so he s one of the first really powerful intellect to convert to christianity in the 1st century. just what did this cosmopolitan jew say to the pagans to make them give up
keep them on the jesus message. paul s epistles to these various christian communities are the earliest surviving christian documents. older than the gospels. and he preached everywhere from small-town synagogues to athens, the center of world culture. convincing philosophers and slaves alike that god had sent his son, jesus, to die and rise again to save everyone. in his letter to the romans, written in 57 a.d., paul says that, by god s will, i may somehow at last succeed in coming to you. nearly three decades after the death of jesus, paul would make his way to rome. but only after he was jailed in jerusalem, where he found himself threatened with death.
within two decades of the crucifixion of jesus, scholars say, christianity faced a life or death moment. this was the major dispute in early christianity, whether followers of jesus have to become jewish in order to worship the jewish god. the conflict threatened to destroy the new faith. how could it be saved? in jerusalem, around the year 48 to 49, the first apostolic council is called in order to resolve the issue of gentile christians. do they convert or don t they convert? paul argues that the holy spirit had descended upon the gentiles apart from the law of moses. therefore, there was no reason to insist that those gentiles be converted first to judaism in order to be a member of the church. and james, the brother of jesus, presiding over this jerusalem
and james, the brother of jesus, presiding over this jerusalem council, agrees with paul. it was a huge triumph for the new faith, and especially for paul, whose argument had won the day. the jesus message was for the whole world, and those who believe that message would win eternal life. but the biggest test was yet to come. just how would the jesus message go down in the pagan heart of the roman empire? maybe i m wrong and nobody ever says goodbye
them burned as human torches in his gardens. he had others wrapped in animal skins and set wild dogs upon them in a public setting. and so this is the first persecution of christians by roman emperor. the reason christians were persecuted early on was not because it was illegal to be a christian. they were persecuted because they were known to be troublemakers. among nero s victims were the two most important leaders of the early christian church. peter had been living and preaching in rome. paul had been living under house arrest. now they were both condemned to death for their faith. peter is not a citizen of the roman empire, and so he is able to be crucified. then he s crucified upside down because he did not feel that he was worthy to die in the same manner that jesus did. paul, who spread christianity throughout the empire, was