Why Did the Church Spread so Quickly in the First-Three Centuries of its Existence?

Abstract

The Christian church has been the most powerful, religious, social, and intellectual institution in the history of western civilization. However, the Christian Church only began as a small, lower-class group of followers in a remote part of the Roman Empire. The initial centre of Christianity was in Jerusalem where Jesus had been crucified, raised from the dead, and where the Pentecost experience had occurred.  These were possibly 20 to 100 people who had been followers of Jesus and who continued to believe in him after his death. The expansion of the church was highly unlikely to succeed. Shortly after the descent of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel was preached in Asia, Europe and Africa by the apostles. Over the course of 300 years, the religion grew, despite many obstacles, to about 5% of the
population of the Roman Empire becoming a world religion commanding the respect of the highest echelons of Roman society and government. St Irenaeus in 220 declared that “the Church is spread throughout the world, even to the ends of the earth”.This essay, therefore, presents the reasons why the Church spread so quickly in the first three centuries of its existence.