Christians Quotes
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Nero did not, technically speaking, prosecute Christians for being Christian. He executed them for committing arson.
True, they probably were not guilty, but that was the charge. Being a Christian was not punishable, but setting fire to Rome was.
Nero’s persecution was localized. It involved only the city of Rome. Nothing indicates that Christians elsewhere in the empire suffered any consequences.
Even more significant, it appears that none of Nero’s successors down to Trajan (ruled 98–117 CE) persecuted Christians.
Between Nero in 64 CE and Marcus Aurelius in 177 CE, the only mention of an emperor’s intervention in Christian affairs, apart from the episode involving Trajan found in Pliny’s letters, is a letter from the emperor Hadrian that gives instructions to a local governor to conduct his trials against the Christians fairly.
Bart Ehrman
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The pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Jews know the true God, and love only the earth. The Christians know the true God, and do not love the earth.
Blaise Pascal
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Contrary to popular opinion, Christians are not nice polite people who never get angry with one another. Those are not the virtues of God's people. Our virtues are truth-telling, kindness, forgiveness and yes, even anger-as long as it is the anger that is part of true love-through which we move closer to one another and to the God who has shown us how it is done.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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Respect for one’s government and the expected obligations of citizenship have limits (though as a modern Western reader I am probably overly inclined to emphasize this qualification). Paul cooperated with the Jerusalem church’s identification with their culture (which was also his culture, Acts 21:20–26), but not to the extent of honoring such nationalism above his commitment to the Gentile mission (Acts 22:21–22). When Christians are more loyal to our ethnicity or nation than to Christ’s body, when nationalism or racism corrupts our love for fellow believers, we have gone beyond giving Caesar what is Caesar’s to giving Caesar what is God’s.
Craig S. Keener
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We simply do not know how many Christians suffered imprisonment or died at the hands of the authorities: possibly hundreds of people, although almost certainly not many thousands.
We do know that, in the end, the Christians came out on top.
Constantine converted, and with one brief exception all the emperors to follow were Christian. There would never again be an official Roman persecution of the Christians.
Throughout these early centuries of on-again, off-again opposition, Christians were not always bullied, beaten, tortured, and executed.
Most of the time, in most places, they were simply left in peace. Many Christians went from cradle to grave without facing any public ridicule, opposition, or persecution.
We do not hear much about these Christians for an obvious reason: peace and quiet rarely make it into the history books.
Bart Ehrman
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I think Christians should be leaders in art, science, philanthropy, charity, and all kinds of good works. We should be good examples for everyone. Unfortunately though, that's not often the case.
Matt Smith
Poison
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Later, a large band of Christians mounted an attack on this native lord, butchering him along with vast numbers of his people and taking all the survivors into slavery, where they duly perished, so that today not a trace remains of what was previously a community with dominion over an area of some thirty leagues.
Bartolomé de las Casas
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If you go into Hasakah province in northeast Syria, that's an area that's as big as Lebanon. It's controlled by the Kurds, the Christians and the moderate Sunnis. And there are airstrips and hotels. You could settle a lot of people there.All we would have to do is be willing to provide them with some weaponry, some defensive weaponry.
Benjamin Carson
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We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God... It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them. They think they are doing God a service in this but actually they are disdaining God's "crooked but straight path". It is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.
Brennan Manning
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I believe that Christians believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not by works. And we believe that if you're saved, Jesus becomes your savior. He makes a promise to you. You can trust his promises. You can bank on that word.
Robert H. Schuller
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Christians should actively engage in efforts to make every societal institution assume its own responsibility, warding off the interference of others. That, too, is participation in the restoration of creation and the coming of the kingdom of God.
Albert M. Wolters
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In some parts of the church, the Apocalypse of John (the book of Revelation) was flat out rejected as containing false teaching, whereas the Apocalypse of Peter, which eventually did not make it in, was accepted. There were some Christians who accepted the Gospel of Peter and some who rejected the Gospel of John. There were some Christians who accepted a truncated version of the Gospel of Luke (without its first two chapters), and others who accepted the now noncanonical Gospel of Thomas. Some Christians rejected the three Pastoral Epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, which eventually made it in, and others accepted the Epistle of Barnabas, which did not.
Bart Ehrman
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Christians, instead of arming themselves with swords, extend their hands in prayer.
Athanasius
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We need to pledge ourselves anew to the cause of Christ. We must capture the spirit of the early church. Wherever the early Christians went, they made a triumphant witness for Christ. Whether on the village streets or in the city jails, they daringly proclaimed the good news of the gospel.
Martin Luther
