Because the early Christians were accused falsely of all sorts of outrageous behavior, Peter urged his readers in I Peter 2:11-25 to be especially careful to live such honorable lives that even their enemies would end up glorifying God. This calling was especially difficult, because they often found themselves in unfair situations that they were powerless to change, in which they suffered unjustly. Amazingly, God called them and calls us to endure unjust suffering and gave us the highest motivation for doing so: Christ already endured unjust suffering for us.
Because of a general persecution in Jerusalem, the believers were scattered and took the gospel to Judea and Samaria, where many believed in Christ.
If someone hears a message but does not act upon it, sometimes we say that “it went in one ear and out the other.”...
In Revelation 2:1-7, we read the letter to the church in Ephesus, a cosmopolitan port city where intellectual and religious currents were always trying...