Spread Of Christianity Research Paper

If you want to talk about missions, the answer is far from found. Every missionary in the world today is an example of both what to do and what not to do, because when it comes to God’s kingdom and God’s people the only person who truly knows is God Himself. From Christians in the distant past, to Christians in the present day, all the way to Christians in the far future. They all did effective and ineffective things when it came to spreading the gospel in all the world. The only way to learn and grow is to look back at past mistakes and past strengths and grow on them or readopt them, without learning from mistakes there will be no improvement.

Christians in the past paved the way for Christianity and set the precedent that so many Christians

However, they did a lot wrong such as forcing citizens to follow Jesus Christ and if they resisted executing them on the spot. There were many goods and services exchanged along the silk road, one of the many things was religion. Christianity made its way to Asia around the 7th century via the silk road (Sunquist p. 240). It is even believed that the Apostle Thomas made the journey to Asia. However, the Persian Empire were fierce enemies of the Roman Empire at the time so crossing boundary lines was difficult and not often successful. According to tradition Thomas was executed by an angry mob (Sunquist p. 240). With this great difficulty and hatred came endless difficulties for missionaries, one of which was pure discouragement because if Thomas could not be successful, how could they? The powerful movement of Christianity in Asia was started by Pope Innocent IV sending a man by the name of John of Carpini instructing him to convert and baptize men in the name of God so that they will submit to the authority of the Pope (Sunquist p. 240). Although it may seem that the Pope wanted to convert simply to expand his rule, God works in mysterious ways and through this act many Mongols were baptized and accepted into the Catholic church. A

Jesus instructs Christians to lean upon each other in order to grow together because it is not possible to do it alone. It is said that these congregations were small and cut off from other churches but they were still “full of life and energy” (Sunquist p. 241). The dedication, wisdom, resilience, and independence of these small churches is astonishing that they would continue to worship for hundreds of years without wavering. Communication is the oxygen of a relationship, without communication the relationship will die. However, these small congregations in Asia defied all odds and carried on praising God for hundreds of years. While John of Carpini was evangelizing in Asia, the Portuguese were determined to be the first people to travel the expansive globe that was so mysterious at the time. They were in search of money and resources for trade, determined they grasped at any opportunity to sail the seas and discover more trade routes. Soon after discovering a trade route to India around the horn of Africa Jesuit missionaries quickly jumped on board the next ship