The Early Church

The resurrection is not the end of the story but the launch of a movement. The early-church period — the apostolic age — runs from Pentecost to roughly the close of the first century, and it tells how a small band of Jewish disciples in Jerusalem became a faith spreading across the Roman empire. The book of Acts narrates the first three decades; the letters of the New Testament show the young churches being taught, corrected, and encouraged along the way.

At Pentecost the Holy Spirit is poured out, and Peter's preaching adds thousands in a day. The gospel breaks out of Jerusalem — first to Judea and Samaria, then, decisively, to the Gentiles, as Peter is sent to Cornelius and the risen Christ converts the persecutor Saul into the apostle Paul. Paul's missionary journeys carry the message across Asia Minor and into Greece and Rome, planting churches and writing the letters that make up much of the New Testament. The age also brings conflict and cost: the council at Jerusalem settles how Gentiles belong to the people of God, and persecution, martyrdom, and the destruction of Jerusalem's temple in AD 70 all mark the period.

Dates here are reasonably firm for the Acts era — Pentecost around AD 30–33, Paul's journeys through the 40s and 50s — and grow less certain toward the century's end, where tradition places the death of the last apostles and the writing of Revelation. Theologically the period shows the church learning what it is: not a building or a nation, but a Spirit-filled people of every background, united to Christ and sent into the world. The story Acts tells is deliberately unfinished — it ends with the gospel reaching Rome and still advancing — because the mission it describes is the one the church continues today.