There is extra material available if you need another copy. Please turn to Revelation 2.
Lord, we thank You this morning for the reminder that You are our living hope. Lord, we were those who were hopeless, but God, who was rich in mercy, sent forth His Son, and we have been born again to that living hope.
Lord, as we come into Your presence for the sharing of Your Word this morning, we thank You that there is continual hope throughout Your Word and throughout church history to encourage us on, to see You afresh and in a new way.
Lord, we commit this time into Your hands as we fellowship this morning around this church of Smyrna, the suffering church. Lord, may we see those before us who had a hope that led them unto giving their lives unto You.
Lord, we pray that Your covering will be over our time today, that we could see You in the freshness and newness of life. Lord, may Your Holy Spirit capture all of our hearts and direct us into the fullness of what You have for us to learn during this time together.
We submit ourselves unto You and declare that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Please turn to Revelation 2, beginning in verse 8. We read the letter to the church at Smyrna:
And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write:
These things saith the first and the last, who was dead, and lived again:
I know thy tribulation, and thy poverty (but thou art rich),
and the blasphemy of them that say they are Jews, and they are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.
Fear not the things which thou art about to suffer:
behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried;
and ye shall have tribulation ten days.
Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.
He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.
Verse 10 says:
Fear not the things which thou art about to suffer:
behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried;
and ye shall have tribulation ten days.
Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life.
Let us read a couple more passages. Turn to John 15. We read these passages because, as we consider the church in Smyrna, there was a great deal of persecution there. We might ask, “Why were they persecuted?” I think these Scriptures can help us consider that question.
John 15:18 says:
If the world hateth you, ye know that it hath hated me before it hated you.
If ye were of the world, the world would love its own:
but because ye are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
Remember the word that I said unto you, A servant is not greater than his lord.
If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you;
if they kept my word, they will keep yours also.
But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent me.
Turn also to Matthew 23:9:
And call no man your father on the earth: for one is your Father, even He who is in heaven.
As we continue this series on lessons in church history, we saw last time how, in the first century, the church in Ephesus had left its first love. They had fallen away and were falling into tradition.
As we come to the church in Smyrna, it represents the second and third centuries. One way of interpreting these letters—and the way we are using for this session—is that they represent different periods and generations in church history. Historically, Smyrna represents the second and third centuries, often called the pre-Constantine period, roughly from AD 100 up to AD 300.
When we left the church in Ephesus, we saw how they had fallen away from their first love. Because of this, the Lord allowed persecution to come in to bring them back to Himself. The Lord allowed persecution to revive that love, to bring them back unto Him.
One of the things we can see throughout this letter and throughout church history is an ebb and flow in our love for the Lord. When there is persecution upon the church, or persecution upon us individually, difficult times have a way of pushing us to the Lord. We get very close to the Lord in difficult times.
But then peacefulness starts to set in. Times become more relaxed, and we find ourselves—and the church throughout history—starting to lapse, getting careless and lax in many practices. There is an ebb and flow. I can testify in my own life that when times are tough, you really press into Him. But when times become lax and you think you are doing all right, we get slack.
As we look at this church today, we must remember that the Lord allowed this to occur because, though they had left their first love, He loved the church so much that He wanted them to return to Himself. It was out of His love that persecution came upon the church, that His name and testimony might be preserved and that He would accomplish all He desired to accomplish.
As we share today, we will be sharing some things about persecution. We are not sharing merely to tell gory stories about martyrs and what they went through. We are asking: What enabled these martyrs to go all the way through to the end?
What allowed husbands and wives to be separated for the sake of the Lord’s name? What captured their hearts and enabled them to love not their lives unto death? We say that phrase almost commonly today, but during this period there were those who truly loved not their lives unto death.
What enabled them to do that? It was beyond natural strength, natural willpower, or determination. There was something that captured their hearts. May the Lord reveal that to us today.
As we look at this letter to the church in Smyrna, we can divide this period into two broad areas. There were external problems, which we call persecution—problems from without. But there were also internal problems—things going on within the church.
There were two attacks upon the testimony of the Lord during this time: persecution from without and corruption from within.
The persecution came mainly from two areas. First, it came from the Roman Empire. The letter to Smyrna says that they would undergo tribulation for ten days, and there were ten major persecutions that the Roman Empire unleashed upon the church in an attempt to destroy it.
There was also a growing influence of pagan intellectualism, as people tried to rationalize and justify everything that was taking place.
We do not know much concerning the condition of the church in Smyrna, because there are not many historical documents. But there is one letter that gives a snapshot of how the world perceived Christians at that time.
The Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor race.
But they display to us their uniqueness by their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life.
They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners.
As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners.
Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers.
They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven.
They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives.
They love all and are reviled by all.
This describes the contrast between believers and the world at that point in time. The Roman Empire was beginning to decline and was fighting to hold on to its power. At the same time, the church was growing. The Lord was raising up a people set apart unto Himself.
Why were believers persecuted? We read in John’s Gospel the main reason: they were hated because of the life of Christ within them. In the spiritual realm, it was a conflict between the enemy and the Lord Jesus. The battle was over our Lord Jesus Christ. They stood for His name’s sake.
This conflict was manifested on earth in many different accusations. In studying church history, I found an old wanted poster from that period listing accusations made against believers. When we first look at them, we might ask, “How could Christians ever be accused of that?” Yet these were the accusations made against our forefathers.
The Christians were accused of cannibalism. We met this morning around the Lord’s table and shared the body and blood of Christ. Because of superstition and misunderstanding, believers were accused of cannibalism. Today we might laugh and say, “How could they ever believe that?” But we must remember that it was a very superstitious world, filled with many different forms of sacrifice.
They were accused of disrupting business. We know from Acts 19 that idol makers were going out of business. The things from which they had made money were losing their hold. Christians were considered anti-business.
They were also accused of gross immorality. Why? They held love feasts. They loved one another, called each other brother and sister, and gave one another a holy kiss. These things were magnified and distorted by the enemy.
Another accusation was that Christians were anti-family. That sounds strange, because Christians are among the most pro-family people in the world. Yet believers sometimes had to make decisions when family ceremonies involved offering incense or worship to idols. Those members of the family who were believers could not participate, and families were divided.
We see this in the Far East during Chinese New Year, when there can be ancestral worship and remembrance of forefathers. Believers have had to separate themselves from participation in those practices. To others, this may appear anti-family, but it is not. The world will accuse believers in this way.
The greatest accusation, and the reason Christians were persecuted most severely, was atheism. That sounds odd—that Christians would be persecuted for being atheists. But why were they considered atheists? Because they would not worship Caesar.
It all came down to worshiping Caesar. If you did not worship Caesar and the thousands of Roman gods, people said you did not truly believe. Caesar worship was the major charge against Christians. They were expected to bow the knee and confess the genius of Caesar—the spirit of Caesar—acknowledging that he was god and lord.
The Roman Empire had many religions that were not persecuted. Why? Those religions would worship Caesar along with their own gods. They would worship everything. But Christians could not do that, and therefore persecution came upon them.
The letter to Smyrna speaks of tribulation for ten days, and there were ten major persecutions. Nero had burned Rome and blamed the Christians. Then came Domitian, the first emperor to claim the title “Lord and God.”
Under Domitian, Christians refused to offer incense to the genius of the emperor. Caesar claimed that he was lord, and many believers would not bow the knee.
During these times, many believers suffered severe persecution. One well-known brother was Ignatius of Antioch. He was taken from Antioch and made to travel all the way to Rome, where he was martyred in the Colosseum.
Along the way, Ignatius wrote letters to brothers, sisters, and assemblies in various localities. The first letter he wrote was to the church in Rome because they had heard that he was coming. He said, in effect, “I am coming to Rome to be martyred. Do not do anything to prevent my martyrdom.”
He thought they might try to use political influence or pay people off, because the government was corrupt and such things could happen. But he wrote because he knew of their love for him. He said, “I have been counted worthy to suffer for my Lord, and do not prevent it.” His letters are still preserved today and encourage the brethren to persevere.
By around AD 200, historians estimate that approximately 80,000 Christian martyrs had died from around AD 30 to AD 200. Of course, when using numbers from that period, there is a significant margin for error, but this is the rough estimate offered by many historians.
Christians were also blamed for natural disasters. Whenever there was a flood, fire, earthquake, or other calamity, Christians were blamed. They were worshiping a strange and unknown God rather than Caesar, and people believed the other gods were angry because of it.
There was a sister named Blandina who suffered during the persecution in Lyons, France—then known as Gaul. By this time, the gospel had spread from Jerusalem and Rome all the way into that region.
During one brief period in Lyons, forty-eight believers were martyred. The local assembly wrote a letter to testify of what had happened and to inform other assemblies.
Blandina was a slave girl. One tactic used by the Romans was to capture slaves and offer them great rewards if they would turn in their masters. Some slaves did so, and accusations of incest and cannibalism were brought against believers. As a result, many were put on trial and condemned to die.
Blandina was among those condemned. The historical record says that this Christian slave girl was typical of the incredible suffering endured by the church.
She was filled with such power that those who by turns kept torturing her in every way from dawn until evening were worn out and exhausted, and themselves confessed defeat from lack of aught else to do to her.
They marveled that breath still remained in her body, all mangled and covered with gaping wounds.
Blandina stood firm in her faith. When she was returned to the prison, she encouraged the other prisoners to stand firm. That was the first day of her persecution.
Later, in the middle of the colosseum, she was tied to a cross and wild beasts were released upon her. The letter says that others being tortured in the arena gained strength by looking at Blandina and hearing her prayers, for they saw in her an image of Christ, who had suffered for them all.
None of the beasts touched her—not the leopards, lions, nor wild boars. Many others died, but none of these animals touched her. She was cut down and taken back to prison.
The next day, Blandina was brought back into the arena. She was scourged, placed on a red-hot iron, and finally gored and tossed by a bull before she died. She never denied the name of the Lord.
The question asked of believers was simple: “Are you a Christian?” It was not, “Do you believe this theological point?” or “Do you believe that?” The question was simply, “Are you a Christian?” There were two answers: yes or no. Those who said yes were condemned to death.
Blandina was not what we might call a great super-saint. She was a little slave girl, serving and being faithful where she was. So often we think of giants of faith who go through suffering and trials, but she was simply a faithful one, seeking to follow the Lord as He led her.
Through her martyrdom in Lyons, a great testimony went forth, and there was a spreading of the gospel throughout southern France in the next generation. Later in that region we hear of the Waldensians and the Huguenots. Some people speak of a silver thread throughout history, by which the Lord takes those faithful to Him and continues His testimony in spite of persecution.
These persecutions were not continuous; they were sporadic. There were periods of peace, such as the period from AD 211 to AD 235.
During these quieter times, homes could be converted into meeting places. One example is the house church at Dura-Europos, on the Euphrates River in modern-day Syria. It was originally an ordinary home with an entrance, courtyard, and rooms, but it was converted into a local meeting place.
Archaeologists discovered it around 1900, and it has often been called the first house church because it was preserved. Of course, many assemblies met in homes, but this one is well known because of its preservation.
The building was approximately fifteen meters square, and the assembly hall could accommodate about seventy or eighty brothers and sisters. Outwardly, it looked like an ordinary home. When persecution was not active, believers could meet freely. But when persecution returned, property could be confiscated and they would no longer be able to meet.
As persecution intensified, conversion to Christianity was forbidden. One significant martyr was Leonidas, the father of Origen. Leonidas was a local leader in the assembly and was taken to prison.
Origen went to visit his father in prison and encouraged him to be faithful unto death. Though he loved his father, he said, “Father, you be faithful to the Lord.”
The story goes that on the day of Leonidas’s martyrdom, Origen wanted to go and be martyred with his father. But his mother hid all of his clothes so that he could not leave the house. He was kept at home and was deprived of martyrdom at that time.
You begin to see a love for the Lord that transcended family relationships. Sons encouraged fathers to be faithful in situations beyond what is natural. There are lessons for us in these faithful ones who endured.
Another sister during this time was Perpetua. The persecution had spread into North Africa, to the city of Carthage.
Perpetua was a young convert who had recently been baptized. She recorded her experiences in a diary, and her writings were preserved. In AD 202, Perpetua was a twenty-two-year-old noblewoman, a new Christian, and the mother of an infant son whom she was still nursing when she and four others were arrested and thrown into prison.
While she was in prison, her father came to visit her. He was not a Christian and asked her to renounce the Lord. She said:
“Father, do you see this vase here, for example, or this water pot?”
He said, “Yes, I do.”
“Could it be called by any other name than what it is?”
He said, “No, it cannot.”
She said, “Well, I cannot be called by any other name than what I am, and that is a Christian.”
Perpetua continued in prison for days. In her own writing, she said:
“I nursed my baby, who was faint from hunger.
In my anxiety, I spoke to my mother about the child.
I tried to comfort my own brother, and I gave the child into their charge.
I was in pain, though, because I saw them suffering out of pity for me.”
A few days later, she was given permission for her baby to stay with her in prison. She wrote:
“At once I recovered my health, and all of a sudden my prison had become my palace, so that I wanted to be there rather than anywhere else.”
Prisons in those days were dark, damp, and very unsanitary. Many martyrs died in prison because of the conditions and never made it to the colosseum or place of execution.
While she was in prison, Perpetua had a dream in which the Lord comforted her and said, “Yes, you will be martyred, but I am with you.” That phrase stayed with her: “I am with you.”
A few days later, she was called before the governor. Her father came again and pleaded with her:
“Daughter, have pity on my gray hair. Have pity on me, your father. Give up your pride. You will destroy all of us. None of us will ever be able to speak freely again because of what you are doing.”
It was great pressure from a father whom she loved. She even acknowledged that her father spoke out of love for her. But she told him, “Father, it will all happen as God wills. For you may be sure that we are not left to ourselves, but are all in His power.”
A few days later, her father appeared again with her infant son in his arms. He cried, “Have pity on your baby. Remember your father. Have pity on your baby.”
The governor also said, “Have pity on your father’s gray hair. Have pity on your infant son. Offer the sacrifice for the welfare of the emperors.”
“I will not,” she replied.
“Are you a Christian?”
“Yes, I am.”
They were condemned to death.
Another account continues:
On the day of their victory, March 7, in the year 203, the day dawned, and they marched from the prison to the amphitheater joyfully, as though they were going to heaven, with calm faces, with joy rather than fear.
Perpetua went along with shining countenance and calm step, putting down everyone’s stare by her own intense gaze.
Perpetua began to sing a song. The crowds became enraged and demanded that the believers be scourged before the line of gladiators. The martyrs rejoiced that they had obtained a share of the Lord’s suffering.
They were dressed in simple cloth robes, placed in nets, and thrown into the middle of the arena for wild animals to attack them.
First the heifer tossed Perpetua, and she fell on her back.
Then, sitting up, she pulled down the tunic that was ripped along the side so that it covered her thighs, thinking more of her modesty than of her pain.
Next she asked for a pin to fasten her untidy hair, for it was not right that a martyr should die with her hair in disorder, lest she might seem to be mourning rather than rejoicing in her hour of triumph, of seeing her Lord.
Then, seeing her slave Felicitas crushed to the ground, Perpetua went over to her and lifted her up. The two stood side by side.
Perpetua called out to her brother in the stands:
“You must all stand fast in the faith and love one another. Do not be weakened by what we have gone through, but be strengthened.”
As the contest came to a close, a leopard was released. After one bite, Saturus was crushed and drenched in blood. They gathered around him, and with one accord and one psalm, they kissed one another and sealed their martyrdom with that ritual kiss of peace.
They took the sword in silence, without moving, allowing the gladiators to martyr them. Perpetua was the last to be martyred. A young gladiator came to her trembling. He struck with his sword but missed, inflicting further pain on her suffering body.
Then Perpetua took the trembling hand of the young gladiator and guided it to her throat. It was as though so great a woman could not be dispatched unless she herself was willing. At that moment, she passed into glory.
It is not known what happened to Perpetua’s husband or son.
When we read these stories and hear of those who have gone before, we are not sharing them merely for emotion or to stir ourselves up. The question is: What was their secret? What did they see? Or, rather, whom did they see?
Perpetua saw the Lord. He was very real within her home. Because she saw the Lord, she went on to follow Him fully, loving not her life unto death.
Brothers and sisters, as we look at the varying degrees of trials, persecutions, and turmoil through which we go, that is the same thing we need: we need to see the Lord. We need to see Him afresh in a living way.
As we see Him, then we can make it through. There is no natural willpower or natural strength that enables a mother to leave her son or a son to leave his father. It is beyond what is natural. It is supernatural, and it is only provided through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We see the Lord carrying on His testimony in that generation and throughout church history.
That is the last martyr story. I cannot take any more.
As we come on down, the persecutions intensified. By the end of this period, more than 410,000 brothers and sisters had been martyred. In that final one-hundred-year period, approximately 330,000 were martyred. There were not many Christians in those days, so this was a very high ratio. There was a cost associated with following the Lord.
One of the most wicked persecutions was under Decius. He implemented what was called a certificate of sacrifice. Everyone had to carry this certificate, and if you did not have it, you could be put to death.
The only way to obtain the certificate was to offer sacrifice to Caesar. Obviously, Christians would not have such a certificate. If you did not have it, you were identified. You can see why many believers at that time were thinking about the Lord’s return. Does that not sound like a mark that everybody had to have upon them? There is nothing new. These things have happened before.
The last and worst persecution came under Diocletian. It was the enemy’s final great attempt to overcome the church through the Roman Empire.
But we know that in spite of persecution, the Roman Empire did not overcome the church; the church overcame the Roman Empire. It was because of the life within. As people saw these martyrs, the saying proved true: the blood of the martyrs watered the seed of the gospel. Martyrdom only increased the gospel going forth in greater measure for the Lord’s name’s sake.
That was persecution from without. But there was also corruption from within. Many have said that corruption within is far more damaging to the Lord’s testimony than persecution without.
The heresies of the early church can be summarized in two ways: either a wrong concept of God or a wrong concept of man.
A wrong concept of God included the denial of the Trinity and the deity of Christ. A wrong concept of man taught that man is inherently good, that within man there is a seed of life or spirit waiting to come forth and blossom. It sounds very much like what is now called New Age thought.
As these heresies came upon the church, different ones were raised up to counterbalance and combat them. These are often called the church fathers.
We find ourselves in something of a dilemma with the church fathers. We owe much to many of their writings. They helped clarify important matters, including the Trinity and the grace of salvation.
However, they were simply earthen vessels. They had flaws, just as any of us do. Their writings were not Scripture.
This is why we must be careful with the term “church father.” Matthew 23:9 tells us not to call any man on earth our father in a spiritual sense. We have only our God and Father.
Many of these men had good intentions, and some suffered martyrdom. There is no question that they were given to the Lord. But when we read their writings, we must read them as we read any book that is not the Bible. We must learn to eat the meat and spit out the bones.
If we simply accept everything, we can become confused. Their writings need to be tested by Scripture.
Clement of Rome is one example. We often wonder what happened to Paul after the events recorded in Scripture. Clement’s letter speaks of Paul going on to Spain. This is one reason we hear that Paul may have gone to Spain after his imprisonment.
Ignatius, whom we mentioned earlier as a martyr, was truly given to the Lord. Yet he was also the first to distinguish bishops from elders. In Scripture, elder and bishop refer to one person, but Ignatius introduced a distinction between them.
In some of his writings, he said that only the bishop was the safeguard to the truth in combating heresies. He taught that only the bishop could administer baptism and the Lord’s table, and that there was no church without a bishop.
These were seeds of the clergy-laity system. In his letter to Smyrna, Ignatius was also the first person to use the word Catholic. He used it in the universal sense, not in the sense of what we now call the Roman Catholic Church. But later people took that word and used it differently.
Papias held a premillennial view of the Lord’s return. Some people may think premillennial teaching is recent, but these discussions were taking place very early. There were post-tribulation views, pre-tribulation views, and many other views. There is nothing new under the sun.
Through Papias, we also learn of the connection between Peter and Mark’s Gospel.
We mentioned Polycarp in our introductory time. In his old age, he was asked to deny the Lord. He said, “Sixty-eight years I have served Him, and He has done me no harm. How can I revile Him now?” With that, he was martyred.
Irenaeus was used greatly by the Lord to combat Gnosticism, exposing its fallacies.
Tertullian laid important groundwork regarding the Trinity. He also wrote against infant baptism and baptismal regeneration, which had already begun to appear. In AD 197, he wrote against these departures from the faith.
Origen, the son of Leonidas, is generally regarded as one of the more spiritual church fathers. He wrote concerning the church:
The church is spiritually based, and all those who are recipients of that divine life belong to it. It is not equated to any human organization.
Why did he need to write that? Because of what was happening through Cyprian. Cyprian had taken up many of the writings of Ignatius and was forcefully using the phrase “the Catholic Church.”
Cyprian taught that there was one church, the Catholic Church, and that outside of it there was no salvation. Outside of the official assembly or organization, people were not believers but heretics. He strongly emphasized the authority of the episcopate, or the bishop.
Many later Episcopal systems looked back to Cyprian’s writings as authority for the way things were established. But they stopped about two hundred years short of where they ought to have gone. Rather than going all the way back to Scripture, people looked to church fathers to justify their systems.
They said, “These men knew the apostles. They were taught by the apostles. They were martyred. They loved the Lord.” All of that may be true, but they still did not always go all the way back to what Scripture says. Even in the ways they were used by the Lord, they were still earthen vessels.
One thing we begin to notice between Origen and Cyprian is that Origen was more eastern, from Alexandria and the Greek world, while Cyprian was more western, from Carthage in North Africa.
Here is a lesson we need to learn: our cultures can influence our perspective on what is spiritual.
Greek culture was philosophical, metaphysical, and mystical. It dealt with questions such as, “Who is Christ?” and “What is the church?” These are important questions, but they must be dealt with in balance. The Greek and eastern mindset brought a mystical and theoretical emphasis into the church.
The western mind—the Latin mind of North Africa and Rome—was very practical. It emphasized church order: “You need a bishop here. The church is this.” It established creeds, rules, and formats. It wanted to define everything in a practical way.
We begin to see a division between East and West surfacing very early. This is a lesson for us, because most of us were born in the United States. There is an American mentality that we do not need to bring into the church.
There are different mentalities and cultures. We need to ask the Lord, through the Holy Spirit, to help us recognize them so that we do not establish cultural churches. We must recognize that we are one in Christ.
In different cultures, the Lord’s life may be manifested in different ways, but we must not let culture dictate that expression. We must let His life within dictate it.
A brother wrote a book called The Americanization of Christianity, describing how America had come forth and Americanized Christianity. We need to be aware of these things when we seek the Lord for direction. We must allow the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us, not merely our natural inclinations.
In America, we can organize and do many things. But all of that needs to go through the cross, allowing His life to come forth and be manifested in the way He desires.
One major development arising from this period was the episcopacy, or the bishop-elder system. It deviated significantly from God’s original heart and purpose.
The key issue was the relationship between elder and bishop. In the New Testament, these terms referred to one position and one person. But they began to be differentiated, and as we move through history, we will see how the system moved further and further away from God’s original heart and purpose.
Many of the writings of Ignatius and Cyprian were produced because the church had problems. They were attempting to combat heresies and address difficulties. But may the Lord quicken us not simply to fall into convenient ways of solving problems. May we continue to go back to the beginning and allow His life to be manifested within us.
During this time, the Lord also had faithful ones. Two groups were raised up: the Montanists and the Novatians.
The Montanists could be called the first charismatic or Pentecostal movement following New Testament times. They began in Phrygia, in Asia Minor, and emphasized a high standard of Christian living, a return to primitive piety, and primitive principles.
They believed believers should live waiting for the Lord’s return, especially in light of the persecution taking place. But their main emphasis was that the Holy Spirit should be given His rightful place in the midst of the assembly.
As bishops were being set up and the headship of Christ was being replaced, the Montanists insisted that the Holy Spirit needed to have His rightful place. There were some exaggerations among them. They had extra-biblical prophecies, and at times individuals went off course.
However, what they were recovering—the living, working Person of the Holy Spirit functioning within the assembly—needed to be recovered. This movement lasted until the sixth century, when it was forcibly destroyed.
The Montanists never called themselves Montanists. They simply called themselves Christians. The name was later attached to them by others.
Tertullian later joined and met with these believers. As the church system was beginning to take on structure, he wrote:
Where three, and yet they be laity, gather, there is the church.
The church is not dependent upon a bishop. The church depends upon our Lord and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst.
The Montanists initially worked within the church, but eventually they were put out. The reform they were trying to bring about was much needed. There were exaggerations, but it was a needed reform within the Lord’s testimony at that time.
The other group was called the Novatians. Again, they did not call themselves Novatians. At times they were called Cathari, a word meaning “pure.”
They began around AD 250 during the persecutions. The question they addressed was this: once a person had lapsed, or offered incense to an idol, should that person be readmitted to the church?
A Christian might undergo persecution, deny the Lord, and then, once the persecution ended, want to return to fellowship. Should such a one be readmitted?
At the same time, there was growing laxity whenever times were smooth. Each time persecution ceased, things seemed to become laxer and laxer. The organized church would allow people to return after a period of probation.
But the probation could be influenced by how much money a person had or how many good works they performed. It was not a probation based upon inward spiritual life or repentance. It was a probation of good works.
The Novatians said no. They said that once someone had lapsed, that person could not return.
That is a very strong stand, is it not? Today we might ask, “What about the grace of God? What about Peter?” But we need to be careful.
Throughout church history, when the Lord begins to recover a spirit of holiness in the midst of His people, there will always be a reaction: “That is too hard. That is too much.” Yet perhaps, when the Lord is recovering holiness, an extreme action may be necessary to establish a foundation from which to move forward.
Consider Acts 5 and Ananias and Sapphira. They lived in the same era as we do—the Lord had risen, the Holy Spirit had come, and they had all the provision we have. Yet they were slain. The Lord saw fit at that time to preserve the purity of the infant church.
At times throughout church history, groups such as the Novatians and the Cathari took very strong stands on holiness. We need to be careful not to throw everything out merely because their stand appears extreme.
Perhaps this was the Lord’s way of preserving His testimony. It may have been necessary at that point in time. The Novatian movement sounds very hard when we first hear it: once you have lapsed, you cannot return. And I think they did carry it somewhat too far.
But within the movement there was a great testimony of the Lord’s life and holiness in contrast to the growing laxity around them.
As we look through church history and see those who stood for the Lord, we must remember that groups such as the Montanists and Novatians were not perfect people. The Lord has never had a perfect church upon this earth.
We do not need to reject everything because of some extremes or doctrines that, in hindsight, we recognize as mistaken. We need to learn the lessons and recognize what the Lord was doing.
Perhaps the Montanists were carried away in prophecy. They believed the Lord would return to Phrygia and establish the New Jerusalem there. But that became a small part of an overall movement seeking to recover the Lord’s life within their midst.
The Novatians stood for holy living. Afterward, there was a great increase in the life of the assemblies because some were willing to stand on the issue of holiness unto the Lord. A foundation was laid to withstand later onslaughts.
When we consider any group in history, we can always point out its faults. But we can also see the Lord in it. That is what we are looking for: His life, His faithfulness, and His call to us.
His call to us today is the same as it was to Smyrna: be faithful unto death.
We do not live under great persecution in the United States. We have it pretty easy, really. But there are many other parts of the world where believers are persecuted, and we do not know what the future will hold.
We have today, and we are accountable for today. If we allow the Lord to work within our hearts and establish His life today, tomorrow will take care of itself as we follow Him.
He says, “Be faithful unto death,” and you will receive the crown of life.
May we be faithful not only to withstand the persecution of this world, but also to recognize corruption within. When corruption begins to come in, to destroy and weaken the Lord’s testimony, will He have those who return unto Him and allow His life to be manifested in a living way during this time?
Let us pray.
Lord, as You have written to this church in Smyrna, You always close with that phrase: “He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
Lord, may we have that ear to hear. Lord, when we see those who have gone before, it is hard even to read the stories and imagine what they went through. But may we see beyond the pain to see You in this, Lord.
Lord, take these historical stories, events, and lives, and allow us to see the reality of Your life within them. May they not merely be fairy tales or high stories, but may we see Your life within each one of them.
Lord, may we know and recognize Your life in a fuller and greater measure. The thought of persecution and suffering is not something that we willingly embrace, but Lord, we call upon You that You will hold us and keep us.
Lord, in this study, may we be faithful unto the end. Where we have trouble hearing, clear our ears that we could know Your voice in the midst of these days. In Jesus’ name, amen.