They don’t make ’em like Antioch anymore. These days, they throw you to the fake news media lions and presstitutes to be devoured…
Quote:
In his letter to the Smyrnaeans (around 107 AD), he wrote: “Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”
Catholic comes from the Greek katholikē, meaning “universal” or “according to the whole.”
Around 107 AD: Ignatius the Bishop of Antioch —One of the most important churches in the ancient world —Was arrested under Emperor Trajan and sentenced to be thrown to wild beasts in the arena in Rome.
The journey from Antioch in Syria to Rome was thousands of miles. So Ignatius wrote letters. Seven of them — to the churches of Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia, Smyrna and to his friend Polycarp. Written while chained between soldiers, dictated at stops along the road, passed to messengers who carried them ahead to the churches he would pass through.
The letters are extraordinary — filled with theology, with pastoral warmth, with warnings about false teaching. They are among the most important documents from the earliest church outside the New Testament itself. But it is his letter to Rome that stops you in your tracks.
He had heard that Christians in Rome were planning to intervene — to use their influence to have him released. He begged them not to. He wrote that he wanted to die. That the wild beasts were his path to God. That if they showed him mercy and got him released he would have to start his journey all over again.
He wrote — “I am God’s wheat and I shall be ground by the teeth of beasts to become the pure bread of Christ.”
He arrived in Rome and was thrown to the lions in the Colosseum. The man who begged for no mercy got exactly what he asked for. And his seven letters have been read by the church for 1,900 years.
“For I am already being poured out like a drink offering and the time for my departure is near.” 2 Timothy 4:6
