Archaeologists continue even today to search for remains of what may have been the meeting places of the early Christians. It's fascinating to imagine where these first Christians held their services, sometimes secretly because of persecution.
Many of the buildings that served the early Christians are in various degrees of rubble now, or gone completely. But what those followers grasped and demonstrated of Jesus' teachings has managed to survive the cultural, economic, and political changes of the last two thousand years. When we look back at these "roots," what do we find? Not rituals or architecture, but church activity: the activity of the Christ. We find natural, spontaneous Christ-healing taking place.
It is remarkable, to say the least, that a small band of rather unsophisticated people living under military occupation in a remote corner of the Roman Empire could have so mightily influenced history, leaving a record that centuries could neither ignore nor forget, a record that couldn't be lost in the dust of a fading civilization.
