The Lost Letters Of Pergamum Analysis

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Recommended: Christianity and the relationship with the Roman empire

The Lost Letters of Pergamum, by Bruce W. Longnecker, is a story of letters being exchanged between characters Antipas and Luke. Antipas is a civic leader of Rome and Luke is the writer of the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. This book was written to give the modern reader a glimpse into the context of Christianity and the first century church. Longnecker conveys the life of Christ through the letters and the effects of his life on the culture. Throughout the book we see clear differences between the Roman Empire and Christianity and by the end of the letters we witness Antipas go through a dramatic change in heart and character.

CONFLICT
Longenecker does a great job in this book of bringing out the differences of the Romans and Christians and effectively showing the challenges that Christians faced during this time. He also presents how the first century church breaks social trends through their faith in Christ. This is shown through the description of Christian worship. In the story, Antipas is amazed that Christians do not relate to one another based on their class or social rank. Longenecker contrasts the differences between the churches as well. He explains the two house-churches, which are true to Christ’s ideals. The other one attempts to include Christianity into Roman paganism. One main conflict in this story is that Pergamum is a place where Satan is present, which means it must have been really difficult for anyone to hold on to faith in Christ. The Romans were incredibly harsh and cruel by how they dealt with the issue too. Anyone who looked to a divine god instead of that given to them from their government could be killed. This is what made the Gospel to the first century population extremely scary and impossi...

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...writes. He makes sure that he knows that he is a nobleman but as time goes on, you see change in Antipas and that he becomes more humble and aware of others. He genuinely wants to know more about Luke and what his values are.
The Lost Letters of Pergamum shows how even in a different time period and culture, people all have their own journey of discovering who Christ is to them. In this first century, the idea of God as one who loves and wants a personal relationship with humans is mind blowing, especially in this Roman Emperor culture where they are taught that the political leader is god. It shocks Antipas that God would want to be involved in his life. This story was amazing and I really enjoyed the letter format. It was so interesting to see the extreme conflict between the Romans and Christians and how God was faithful and saved Antipas in the end despite it.

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