Smiths Bible Dict. The exact date of the introduction of Christianity into Edessa in northern Mesopotamia is not certain. Seleucus I Nicator, refounded the town as a military colony in BC, and called it Edessa; it became the Capital city of the region known as Armenia. However there is no doubt that even before AD Christianity had spread vigorously within Edessa and its surroundings and that the royal house joined the church.
We do know that a Christian council was held at Edessa as early as A. Certainly the early Christians were taught to be law abiding, and to work well, so that the Name of Christ should be held in honor by Unbelievers.
Skip to content. Enjoyed reading this story? You can get the whole book, with fifty-two more stories. Judas said to him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world? Jude Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called:.
John ,9 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? John The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? John ,60 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
Second, angelic apostasy, angels that excel in strength, that do His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word, kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, and they are reserved under darkness for the judgment of the great day.
Lastly, heathen licentiousness in Sodom and Gomorrah, the going after strange flesh, contrary to what God has ordained, and what nature herself taught, equally apostasy in principle; they suffered the vengeance of eternal fire.
We gather from what the Holy Ghost reveals to us here and only here, that the signal honor which for wise reasons God paid to Moses in burying his body Deut. Deuteronomy , stirred up the enmity of the devil, and gave occasion for collision between him and Michael, who may have been engaged in this service to Moses. Dominion and dignity had been vested in Israel's leader and law-giver, Satan despised it as now do they who are his agents; yet sharp as the contention was, the enemy failed to provoke the archangel into what would have been unbecoming the subjection which was coupled with dominion and dignity in his person.
Unlike Satan he abode in the truth, and kept his estate. Compare John 44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
John This then is in marked contrast to apostasy, thus we have three instances of a compared, and one of a contrasted character. Again he portrays the apostates, they speak evil in their ignorance, and corrupt themselves in what by mere nature they understand.
There follow further expressive touches from the hand of the Spirit of God; these apostates were sunken rocks of terrible danger at the feasts of love or fellowship-meetings of the saints. Such holy scenes were violated by the presence of these remorseless sensualists who were there only to satiate their carnal appetites. The description then becomes crowded with striking imagery—they were as trees without fruit, or whose fruit was withered or blasted, rootless and fruitless, morally and.
What a picture! And, solemn thought, their doom was impressively foretold many centuries before, for we now learn that, if left behind when the church is taken, this residuum of nominal Christianity, to be overwhelmed with unsparing judgment when the Lord returns personally to the earth. Enoch, the seventh from Adam, in the first recorded prophecy from the lips of man, had prophesied of the doom of these Christian apostates when the Lord should be manifested, accompanied by the myriads of His redeemed saints!
Thus, while the coming of the Lord as the Seed of the woman into this world had been first announced of God Himself in Eden in connection with His purposes of grace, we learn that the Lord's second coming had been the burden of the testimony of His first prophet in connection with the judgment of those who, in face of its fullest display, should most flagrantly abuse that grace.
These are they who set themselves apart [compare Isa.
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