Overview of Church History

After the death and resurrection of Jesus, He ascended into heaven with the promise that He would return, and He told His disciples to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit commenced to be poured out on God's people at Pentecost and a great revival started, with many thousands of new believers coming to the Lord. ( Read the book of Acts in the Bible to get the full picture ). Paul was a zealous Jew who dedicated himself to the persecution of this new movement, seeing it as blasphemous and an affront to all things Jewish.

He was confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus and as a result of this meeting, discovered that Jesus was in fact who he said he was, the Son of God, and Paul was given the task of bringing the good news of salvation through Jesus to the Gentiles, or non-Jewish people. As this movement, Christianity, grew over the following centuries, it was becoming very popular and, partially because it was seen as a potential threat to the Roman Empire, the Roman Emperor, Constantine, had Christianity adopted as the official 'religion' of the Empire in the 4th century. The church leaders in Rome were given much power and authority at that time. This melding of state and Christianity eventually led to a watering down and adulteration of the true gospel, with many religious rites and practices coming into being that were neither sanctioned by God or good for His people.

The Great Revival rode on the back of the advent of the printing press which led to a greater number of Bibles being in circulation. You see, previously, Bibles, as with all books, had to be hand-written. This meant that the Bible was a very valuable book and circulation was restricted to the aristocracy and those within the church hierarchy. The first book to be printed was the Bible and once people realised that the church was teaching them things contrary to God's word, there came a move away from the traditional church spear-headed by a young monk called Martin Luther in the 1500's, to churches led by the Holy Spirit and following the teachings ( or Doctrine ) contained in the Bible, recognising that the Bible is what it says it is: God's word. These churches are commonly referred to as Protestant churches, because they were formed in protest against false teachings of the traditional church. This is by no means a full version of church history but is what the title says; an overview.

Now there are many churches that come into the category 'Protestant' such as ie. Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, to name a few. The differences between these Protestant churches is largely in the way they do things rather than in what they believe. It's true that some of us are quiet, reserved people and others of us are more 'out there' types. There are churches that are more suited to the quieter people, with more reserved, quieter, or more traditional music, then there are those churches where the congregation is boogieing down in the aisles and there is nothing wrong with either style or anything in between as long as God gets the glory and you are in the type of church which leads you to a greater relationship with God. I've heard it said that whilst we all eat, there are Italian restaurants, Mexican ones, Chinese, Turkish, etc because there are many different tastes out there and it's good to cater for them all, amen? The one thing that we must be careful not to do is to criticise other churches for the way they do things unless they are teaching false doctrine. The key, if you want to find a church, is to be aware of what they are teaching. Is it in line with the word of God? The other thing is 'is it Spirit-led?' I mean Holy Spirit led. A good church will not be too bound up in tradition or structure as to bind the Holy Spirit.