2. The siege had been predicted in the gospels (Matt. 24. 15-18; Mark 13. 14), and was expected by the disciples of Christ. The Christians in Jerusalem and Judea withdrew to Pella in the Jordan valley; but their numbers were not large, showing that Jewish Christianity must have declined since A. D. 58 (see Acts 21. 20), while Gentile Christianity had increased. After the destruction of Jerusalem Jewish Christianity remained for 200 years a feeble and declining sect, hated by their own people as traitors, and despised by Gentile Christians because they still observed the Jewish law.
3. The effect of the fall of Jerusalem was to draw a sharp line of division between Jews and Christians. Before, the two classes had been closely related, and confused in the popular mind. Thenceforth the two streams ran further and further apart, and have continued apart even to our own time. All Jewish rites ceased in the church, Christians could no longer be Jews; and after 125 A. D. Jews could no longer be Christians without renouncing Judaism. The church was now thoroughly a Gentile, non-Jewish church. Note in the gospel of John how "the Jews" are everywhere named as enemies of Christ (John 5. 16; 7. 1; 11. 8; 18. 36); and yet the author of this book was himself a Jew by birth and training; but at the time of writing he had ceased to be a Jew.
II. St. John at Ephesus. Ephesus, at the western end of Asia Minor, was now the leading city of Christianity. It is probable that the apostle John passed the last thirty years of his life in that city. He was revered as the last of the apostles; but he was not a statesman or man of affairs; rather a mystic and man of meditation. It is supposed that he died about 100 A. D. but the date is not certain.
III. The Rise of the Heresies. 1. This was the inevitable result of the Greek mind working on the simple doctrines of the gospel. The Christian doctrine was Jewish; and the Jewish mind was not given to subtle intellectual questions. But when Christianity ceased to be Jewish and began to Gentile it was dominated by the Greek spirit of restless inquiry. Asia Minor was the home of wild, uncontrolled thinking. Sects almost without number appeared, wrangled, and divided over every article of the creed. The more mysterious the question, the more apart from practical life and from human interest, the more fascinating became the study.
2. Two great classes of sects embraced many minor groups.
1.) The Ebionites. Strict Jews, who sought to make Christianity a branch of Pharisaism, keeping the Jewish law. 2.) The Gnostics. People with peculiar views concerning the nature of God, heavenly beings, the nature of Christ.
3. The results of these controversies were both good and evil. 1.) Good in that the clashing of ideas aided in fixing in permanent form the true doctrines of the church. 2.) But far more evil; for the energies of the members were absorbed in debate and controversy; the spiritual life of the church greatly declined; the aim ceased to be devotion to Christ, but was now orthodoxy in belief. Christianity became a creed, instead of an inner spiritual life.
IV. The Second Imperial Persecution; under the emperor Domitian, son of Titus, about A. D. 95. This was far more widely extended than the former persecution under Nero; and it was followed by a long series of persecutions, wherein untold thousands of Christians were put to death. The inevitable conflict had come between Christianity and the Roman empire, and it lasted two hundred years; but at its close the cross was triumphant over the Roman eagles. It is not difficult to see the causes of this struggle: