religious leaders in Rome

• Jesus prepared for subsequent Christian missionaries

132:0.4Je­sus learned much about men while in Rome, but the most valu­able of all the man­i­fold ex­pe­ri­ences of his six months’ so­journ in that city was his con­tact with, and in­flu­ence upon, the re­li­gious lead­ers of the em­pire’s cap­i­tal. Be­fore the end of the first week in Rome Je­sus had sought out, and had made the ac­quain­tance of, the worth-while lead­ers of the Cyn­ics, the Sto­ics, and the mys­tery cults, in par­tic­u­lar the Mith­raic group. Whether or not it was ap­par­ent to Je­sus that the Jews were go­ing to re­ject his mis­sion, he most cer­tainly fore­saw that his mes­sen­gers were pres­ently com­ing to Rome to pro­claim the king­dom of heaven; and he there­fore set about, in the most amaz­ing man­ner, to pre­pare the way for the bet­ter and more cer­tain re­cep­tion of their mes­sage. He se­lected five of the lead­ing Sto­ics, eleven of the Cyn­ics, and six­teen of the mys­tery-cult lead­ers and spent much of his spare time for al­most six months in in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion with these re­li­gious teach­ers. And this was his method of in­struc­tion: Never once did he at­tack their er­rors or even men­tion the flaws in their teach­ings. In each case he would se­lect the truth in what they taught and then pro­ceed so to em­bel­lish and il­lu­mi­nate this truth in their minds that in a very short time this en­hance­ment of the truth ef­fec­tively crowded out the as­so­ci­ated er­ror; and thus were these Je­sus-taught men and women pre­pared for the sub­se­quent rec­og­ni­tion of ad­di­tional and sim­i­lar truths in the teach­ings of the early Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies. It was this early ac­cep­tance of the teach­ings of the gospel preach­ers which gave that pow­er­ful im­pe­tus to the rapid spread of Chris­tian­ity in Rome and from there through­out the em­pire.

132:0.5The sig­nif­i­cance of this re­mark­able do­ing can the bet­ter be un­der­stood when we re­cord the fact that, out of this group of thirty-two Je­sus-taught re­li­gious lead­ers in Rome, only two were un­fruit­ful; the thirty be­came piv­otal in­di­vid­u­als in the es­tab­lish­ment of Chris­tian­ity in Rome, and cer­tain of them also aided in turn­ing the chief Mith­raic tem­ple into the first Chris­tian church of that city. We who view hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties from be­hind the scenes and in the light of nine­teen cen­turies of time rec­og­nize just three fac­tors of paramount value in the early set­ting of the stage for the rapid spread of Chris­tian­ity through­out Eu­rope, and they are:

132:0.61. The choos­ing and hold­ing of Si­mon Pe­ter as an apos­tle.

132:0.72. The talk in Je­ru­sa­lem with Stephen, whose death led to the win­ning of Saul of Tar­sus.

132:0.83. The pre­lim­i­nary prepa­ra­tion of these thirty Ro­mans for the sub­se­quent lead­er­ship of the new re­li­gion in Rome and through­out the em­pire.

132:0.9Through all their ex­pe­ri­ences, nei­ther Stephen nor the thirty cho­sen ones ever re­al­ized that they had once talked with the man whose name be­came the sub­ject of their re­li­gious teach­ing. Je­sus’ work in be­half of the orig­i­nal thirty-two was en­tirely per­sonal. In his labors for these in­di­vid­u­als the scribe of Da­mas­cus never met more than three of them at one time, sel­dom more than two, while most of­ten he taught them singly. And he could do this great work of re­li­gious train­ing be­cause these men and women were not tra­di­tion bound; they were not vic­tims of a set­tled pre­con­cep­tion as to all fu­ture re­li­gious de­vel­op­ments.