Starting With the Basics - Spiritual Empowerment Book One

By Dr. Tanya Smith

Are you a new babe in Christ? If so, you may have so many questions about God and faith to just name a few. You will gain the answers to those questions through attending church services. But what about understanding the church?

Maybe you a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Warrioress Publishing
• Release date: Jan 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781087997308

Book preview

Introduction

Starting with the Basics was originally started while I was still living in North Carolina and was the Elder over Education and Pastoral Care and teaching the Association Program for the North Carolina School of Theology out of our church satellite location. I was in school obtaining my Master of Divinity. My pastor called me into his office on day and said God gave him a vision of starting a Biblical and Theological School as part of the outreach of the ministry. He wanted me to come up with the courses to start basic introduction classes into Ministry.

Throughout the four book series entitled Spiritual Empowerment, you will see some of those manuals that I created. We never finished the project of the first set of classes or the school before he passed away in 2021, even though we had picked back up some conversations about it in 2020.

Months after his death the Lord brought back to my remembrance these manuals and I found them on my hard drive. There were a lot of emotions when I first saw them, some bringing back memories of my pastor and his death, but other feelings pulling me to finish in my own way what we had started. Out of that the Lord told me to take the manuals and create them into a book. As I started digging into the manuscripts, within a few hours, the Lord had me dividing the information into four books, with the series title, titles to each book, and chapters that I needed to add to each book to make them complete.

The vision the Lord gave me for this series is to bring knowledge to the church leaders to share with their congregations in a class or seminar setting on the church, it’s functions, and functions of the five-fold ministry. However, it is not just for that purpose. It is for anyone who wants a better understanding of the church whether you are a new babe in Christ or a seasoned saint.

I pray that whatever you're hoping to gain from this book and the entire series, you find the understanding and knowledge that you are looking for and that I am trying to bring.

History of Christianity

Christianity

There is no doubt that the start of Christianity began with Jesus Christ. He was born to be the Messiah, the Savior of the world. He taught God’s Word and prophesized the coming of the Kingdom of God. His followers believe, per the Gospels, that He is the Son of God, that He died for the forgiveness of our sins, He was raised from the dead and exalted by God. He currently sits in heaven on the right-hand side of Our Father interceding on our behalf’s. He will return again to reign in the New Kingdom at a time that we do not know.

The earliest followers of Jesus were apocalyptic Jewish Christians and the Gentiles. The inclusion of Gentiles in the development of the early church caused some problems in the first two centuries of the Christian Era.

In 313 AD, Emperor Constantine I issued the Edict of Milar that legalized Christian worship.

In 380 AD, Christianity was a prominent Roman religion within the Roman Empire’s church.

The Early Christianity Era is said to have begun with Jesus’ ministry around 27-30 and ended with the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. This era is divided into two periods. The Apostolic Age is from 30-100 and is when the first apostles were still alive. This age is named after the apostles and their missionary work. The second is the Ante-Niceness period from 100-325. This literally means before Nicaea for the First Council of Nicaea of 325. A more formal church structure grew in this age. Christian doctrines were developed and Christianity grew apart from Judaism and created its own identity. There was a rise in Christian sects, cults, and movements that had different interpretations of Scripture. Two of the biggest discrepancies was on the divinity of Jesus and the nature of the Trinity.

In the 16th century, the growing criticism of the Roman Catholic ecclesiological structure and the behavior of the church led to the Protestant movement. This movement split western Christianity.

By the end of the first century, the Pauline Epistles were in circulation and by the early third century a set of writings similar to the current New Testament existed. There were still ongoing disputes however over Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 1 & 2 John and Revelation. In the fourth century there was an agreement on the New Testament except for the Book of Revelation which wasn’t accepted until the fifth century.

Constantine summoned the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. He established that the emperor was responsible to God for the spiritual health of his subjects and required him to maintain orthodoxy.

In the fourth century Arianism was a popular doctrine. It taught that Christ is distinct from and subordinate to God. Eventually this doctrine was condemned as heresy and eliminated by the Roman Catholic Church.

The Crusades

What are the Crusades you may ask? Well, they were a very important part of our Christian History. They are the campaigns in the Holy Land against Muslim forces. The Holy Land was a part of the Roman Empire until the Islamic conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. Christians were able to visit the sacred places until 1071.

The First Crusade, in 1099 captured Jerusalem after Antioch. In 1145, the Second Crusade was when Islam took over Edessa. The Third Crusade is famous for the battle between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. The Fourth Crusade was in 1202 and was supposed to take back the Holy Land but failed.

Jerusalem was held by the crusades for almost a