Thank you.
“once more I believe in the See of Jesus Christ. There were churches following Christ up into the Caucuses Mountains and Eastern Europe, and all the way to Northwest Europe in the first three centuries which had never heard of the “See of Rome.”
1. The histories of Durant, Wells and others well documenting the surging human migration of those three centturies. Migration was not static at all. There was migration of millions from the Mediteranean region to ALL areas of the then known world, including Europe, as far as the British Isles and further north.
2. People were traveling during those centuries from northern and central Europe to the Mediteranean region. They were merchants and others. Travel was no more static than general migration.
3. There was no centralization of Christian ecclsiastical power in Rome in either the first or second centuries. The was no over-arching “SEE” there.
4. The spread of Christianity during the first century is described in the Scriptures themselves as being rapid and expansive. Two passages are in 1 Thessalonians and Colossians, letters written to two cities with the Meditterannean Sea to the south. It is easy to assume logically that their exapnsive evangelism was to the north and to the west.
5. Although it is not stated in the Scriptures, Paul may have actually made it to Spain, which he did state as a plan of his. Looking at a map of the Atlantic coastline, and knowing that there was both commercial and migratory movement between Spain and the British Isles by sea, long before there was a Roman “SEE,” It is a logical assumption that the fruit, or the fruit of the fruit of Paul’s ministry was already in the British Isles in the first and second centuries.
6. A straight line can be drawn from Antioch (merely to pick a point where the Bible describes a missionary movement)to almost any point in central and northern Europe (EVEN WHAT IS NOW THE CZECH REPUBLIC), and the the reading of Durant and Wells will reveal that during the first century there were already migratory and commerical movements along those lines.
7. It would be unreasonable to assume that the migrations northward from the Med. Sea included no persons who received the Gospel in the Med. area, Syria, Byzantania, Palestine, etc., long beforethere was any centralized ecclesiastical power in Rome.
6. Christians of that day were fervent and soul-winning and missionary in their intent.