Re: The Early Christians: In Their Own Words

The Christians knew that such a total transformation of all values, such a 
turning upside down of all strata of society, could never be achieved by 
human power. Knowing this and having boundless faith in the almighty God, 
their insight was immeasurably deeper than any human
politico-revolutionary 
threat to the present power structure. Yet the very fact that theirs was 
not a rebellion based on human opposition and violent insurrection –
easily 
crushed by the coercive power of the State – made these representatives of

impending judgment and the creation of a new order appear all the more 
dangerous. It was they who called themselves “foreigners” and “strangers” 
in contemporary state and society, “citizens” of a quite different 
“political, suprapolitical order!” It could be proved that the apocalyptic

and prophetic books they read, as well as their own Revelation of John, 
were full of revolutionary opposition to the existing civic order. And did

they not, as self-professed vassals of the coming Christ, stand in direct 
opposition to the cultic worship of the emperor?