The Doctrines of Salvation and the Church

Paper details:

How did the periods of persecution cause the church to think about the doctrines of salvation and the church? That is, if a baptized believer succumbed to persecution and gave up his/her faith, did the church believe salvation was lost as a result? Also, could the church include Christians who denied their faith?

Doctrine of Salvation question: How did the periods of persecution cause the church to think about the doctrines of salvation and the church? That is, if a baptized believer succumbed to persecution and gave up his/her faith did the church believe salvation was lost as a result? In addition, could the church include Christians who denied their faith?

            During the founding of the Church in the early years of the apostolic work in building the foundations of the Lord’s church, it was mainly the apostles being persecuted by the Jews. It wasn’t until near the end of Peter’s and Paul’s life that Christianity and the church started being persecuted that began with Emperor Nero needing a ‘scapegoat’ to blame for the destruction of  a part of Rome from a fire that he started, he wanted to be admired and not ridiculed . Earle Cairns stated “Persecution of the Christians was both ecclesiastical and political. The Jews were the persecutors during the infancy of the church in Jerusalem. Only in the reign of Nero (54-68) did organized persecution begin to come from the Roman state. Nero blamed Christians for the disastrous fire in Rome in A.D. 64 and persecuted the church.”[1]

[1] (Cairns, Earle E. Christianity Through the Centuries: A History of the Christian Church, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996, 90).