The Apostolic Churches
Jesus called out His church during His earthly ministry and empowered it at Pentecost. The apostles planted local churches of baptized believers, and under Nero those churches met the first great persecution.
Read in Order
Oldest first. Each entry opens its page on the church-history timeline.
c. AD 27–30 · Free churches · The church began with Jesus Himself. He called His first disciples, appointed the twelve, taught them, gave them church discipline, and committed the ordinances to them. This called-out assembly of baptized believers was His church, and it was empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
AD 30 or 33 · Free churches · Jesus had already called out His church: the disciples He gathered, taught, and baptized during His ministry. Fifty days after the Passover at which He was crucified, the Holy Spirit came upon them in Jerusalem. Peter preached the crucified and risen Christ, about three thousand who received the word were baptized and added unto them, and the empowered church began its mission to the nations.
c. AD 49 · Free churches · The church at Jerusalem, with its apostles and elders, received messengers from the church at Antioch to settle whether Gentile believers must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be saved. After hearing Peter, Paul, Barnabas, and James, the apostles, the elders, and the whole church agreed that Jews and Gentiles alike are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, and they sent a letter to the churches. Acts 15 records it. Unlike the later councils of bishops called by emperors, this was a local church under the apostles, receiving messengers from another.
AD 64–c. 260 · Free churches · From Nero's attack on the believers at Rome in 64 to Valerian's edicts of 257 and 258, the name of Christ was a crime in the Roman Empire. Most persecution was local and sporadic until Decius demanded that everyone sacrifice to the gods in 250. Ignatius, Polycarp, the martyrs of Lyons, and Perpetua chose death rather than deny Christ, and the churches grew through their witness.
People and Errors of This Era
Biographies of those who shaped it, and the false teachings Christ's churches withstood.