Kevin Acosta
World Religions
November 18th,2018
Professor: Emmanuel Dennis
Christianity has Evolved
Early Christianity seem to have been a religion in that instigated bad things, trying to
establish what Christians should believe, not by consensus but by conflict. When the apostle Paul
spoke of ‘false apostles’ and (sarcastically) ‘super apostles’ he was simply referring to apostles
who taught a different Christianity than he taught. The church grew throughout the first
centuries, but something happened along the way. The church began to value tradition more than
the Word of God and became more of a religious order than a church. Because of this
Christianity later on split into different branches (Orthodox etc.).
What the apostle Paul was simply speaking about was that the false prophets didn’t abide
by the word of God, they did worship him but in the wrong ways. The early church sentenced
many people to death. And had very crude punishments. Examples of these punishments include
stoning to death, burning to death, and torture. It is believed by many that early Christians were
very harsh and left a bad taste in people’s mouths when they thought of them, even in today’s
time people see Christianity at the beginning to have been very mean and dark.
Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of
heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven”. This quote refers to the
differences between being a believer and finding a place in the kingdom of God. The early
Church followed everything “by the book standard” they were very strict, and while that makes
them believers that doesn’t necessarily mean they have a place in the kingdom of God waiting
for them. A great example was Judas the betrayer. He was a believer of Christ an apostle even
who ended up betraying Jesus for silver. The early church seemed to have thought that if they did
everything exactly by the book and how they thought was fir and just then they would all go to
heaven, but that’s not the case, nobody should’ve died or suffered, and they put a lot of people
through that. To ascend into the Kingdom of God one must be a good individual person, love
Jesus, love themselves, and love and respect the creations of God.
Christianity started about 2000 years ago in Judea (present-day Israel) with Jesus Christ
and his faithful group of disciples. During this period, Judea was a cross-cultural mecca of
