Stephen

128:3.6And this was the same Stephen who sub­se­quently be­came a be­liever in the teach­ings of Je­sus, and whose bold­ness in preach­ing this early gospel re­sulted in his be­ing stoned to death by irate Jews. Some of Stephen’s ex­traor­di­nary bold­ness in pro­claim­ing his view of the new gospel was the di­rect re­sult of this ear­lier in­ter­view with Je­sus. But Stephen never even faintly sur­mised that the Galilean he had talked with some fif­teen years pre­vi­ously was the very same per­son whom he later pro­claimed the world’s Sav­ior, and for whom he was so soon to die, thus be­com­ing the first mar­tyr of the newly evolv­ing Chris­tian faith. When Stephen yielded up his life as the price of his at­tack upon the Jew­ish tem­ple and its tra­di­tional prac­tices, there stood by one named Saul, a cit­i­zen of Tar­sus. And when Saul saw how this Greek could die for his faith, there were aroused in his heart those emo­tions which even­tu­ally led him to es­pouse the cause for which Stephen died; later on he be­came the ag­gres­sive and in­domitable Paul, the philoso­pher, if not the sole founder, of the Chris­tian re­li­gion.

194:4.11And so all went well in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til the time of the com­ing of the Greeks in large num­bers from Alexan­dria. Two of the pupils of Ro­dan ar­rived in Je­ru­sa­lem and made many con­verts from among the Hel­lenists. Among their early con­verts were Stephen and Bar­na­bas. These able Greeks did not so much have the Jew­ish view­point, and they did not so well con­form to the Jew­ish mode of wor­ship and other cer­e­mo­nial prac­tices. And it was the do­ings of these Greek be­liev­ers that ter­mi­nated the peace­ful re­la­tions be­tween the Je­sus broth­er­hood and the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees. Stephen and his Greek as­so­ciate be­gan to preach more as Je­sus taught, and this brought them into im­me­di­ate con­flict with the Jew­ish rulers. In one of Stephen’s pub­lic ser­mons, when he reached the ob­jec­tion­able part of the dis­course, they dis­pensed with all for­mal­i­ties of trial and pro­ceeded to stone him to death on the spot.

194:4.12Stephen, the leader of the Greek colony of Je­sus’ be­liev­ers in Je­ru­sa­lem, thus be­came the first mar­tyr to the new faith and the spe­cific cause for the for­mal or­ga­ni­za­tion of the early Chris­tian church. This new cri­sis was met by the rec­og­ni­tion that be­liev­ers could not longer go on as a sect within the Jew­ish faith. They all agreed that they must sep­a­rate them­selves from un­be­liev­ers; and within one month from the death of Stephen the church at Je­ru­sa­lem had been or­ga­nized un­der the lead­er­ship of Pe­ter, and James the brother of Je­sus had been in­stalled as its tit­u­lar head.

128:3.5Per­haps the most no­table of all these con­tacts was the one with a young Hel­lenist named Stephen. This young man was on his first visit to Je­ru­sa­lem and chanced to meet Je­sus on Thurs­day af­ter­noon of Pass­over week. While they both strolled about view­ing the As­monean palace, Je­sus be­gan the ca­sual con­ver­sa­tion that re­sulted in their be­com­ing in­ter­ested in each other, and which led to a four-hour dis­cus­sion of the way of life and the true God and his wor­ship. Stephen was tremen­dously im­pressed with what Je­sus said; he never for­got his words.

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.

188:5.6The tri­umph of the death on the cross is all summed up in the spirit of Je­sus’ at­ti­tude to­ward those who as­sailed him. He made the cross an eter­nal sym­bol of the tri­umph of love over hate and the vic­tory of truth over evil when he prayed, “Fa­ther, for­give them, for they know not what they do.” That de­vo­tion of love was con­ta­gious through­out a vast uni­verse; the dis­ci­ples caught it from their Mas­ter. The very first teacher of his gospel who was called upon to lay down his life in this ser­vice, said, as they stoned him to death, “Lay not this sin to their charge.”