How Armenia "Invented" Christendom - Christian History

Below is a link to a story in Christian History magazine about the beginings of the church in Armenia. While I studied Arabic years ago in California one of my teachers was a Syrian born Armenian, Mr. Attollah. He had a zesty love of learning. His faith was one which had adopted a lot of American Evangelicalism but I think he maintained that his faith was that of a Catholic Armenian.

I found the story below interesting for several reasons. Another is some of the commentary on state-church relations. I do not desire a church supported by our government but we need to be careful about thinking the American system is transcendant, it only one way of many of church and state to relate. If we are to engage culture we must be aware of which principles are transcendant and which are particular to our circumstance.


How Armenia "Invented" Christendom - Christian History: "Tortured for Christ
No man has more stature in the Armenian church today than Gregory the Illuminator. While not the first to bring Christianity to Armenia, Gregory is, at least in the minds of Armenians, the nation's spiritual father and the people's patron saint.

"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In The Hours

Image
In The Hours Words by Helen L. Parmelee Music by Kevin Twit http://www.igracemusic.com/hymnbook/lead/inthehours.pdf This song by Indelible Grace is one that really moves me. I think it moves me because it reminds me of my own story. The words remind me of God's work in my life through the blessing of suffering. A lot of my best days walking with my Lord has actually been days of suffering. Verse one reminds me of growing up when I felt rejected by others but God was my song. 1. In the hours of pain and sorrow, When the world brings no relief When the eye is dim and heavy, And the heart oppressed with grief While blessings flee, Savior Lord we trust in Thee! While blessings flee, Savior Lord we trust in Thee! Verse two talks about my drifting from the Lord when I was caught up in pride and the sin of self-sufficiency. 2. When the snares of death surround us, Pride, ambition, love of ease Mammon with her false allurements, Words that flatter, smiles that please Then ere we yield, S
Read more

Was the New Testament Letters Only Written to Male Brothers?

  Question:   Was the Bible written to men only and not to women?   Some teach that the New Testament letters address brothers exclusively.      Executive Summary Answer:   Women and men share in the blessings of the gospel, Scripture was written for both women and men. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:27 ESV) Answer:   The Bible recognizes differences between genders but also recognizes the commonality between male and female genders.   The book of Proverbs is written to sons to gain wisdom.   “Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.”   (Prov. 1:8-9 ESV) The book of Proverbs was written in order to teach young men wisdom.   Even so, often it is the female gender that teaches wisdom.   Early in the book, the male gender, a son, is to embrace the teaching from a member of the
Read more

Bridging the Chasm

My good friend the Jollyblogger has been writing on Bridging the Chasm , meaning the church communicating with the secular world. In the early 80's YWAM put out a pamphlet on missions prayer. One of the things they encouraged Christians to pray for was different areas of influence: * Government * Business * Media/Journalism * The Arts * Education * Entertainment (I'm not sure that is the complete list.) As I prayed for these areas of influence, I found that Christians really wrote about a couple of these in the early 80's; Government and Business. For government you had movements like the Moral Majority and Focus on the Family writing actually about a very narrow aspect of government; moral issues. Yes, I'm grouping all Focus on the Family's issues in the area of moral issues. The government is so much more than moral issues. The business issues were mostly addressed by Bill Gothard, Larry Burkett and later Ron Blue. I'm not sure how ade
Read more