Dr. Tom Williams

But your allegiance must first be to the state, and it must be to Caesar, who is divine.

And

Christians obviously could not abide by this.

And it was primarily their higher allegiance to God that, in the end, put them in a situation of necessary conflict with the Roman state.

The other group that somehow escaped this, and scholars give an answer to why they escaped

were the Jews living within the Roman Empire.

And the reason was they would technically have been illegal as well because of their unwillingness, obviously, to sacrifice to other gods other than Yahweh.

The difference was

that whereas the Jews were content to kind of keep to themselves, they were not a proselytizing faith.

They were not going out there to make converts.

They were not preaching on the streets.

They were not bringing people into the fold.

The Christians were the exact opposite.

So you had Christians, and this really alarmed powers within the Roman Empire, whether they were emperors themselves or local governors at different times, the persecutions ebbed and flowed.

But the problem was, so many people were converting.

Christianity was so powerful and so attractive that you had people from the very poorest to the patricians and the very wealthy.

It was something that spanned every class and every social group, so that you had soldiers and you had politicians and you had artists and you had literary figures.

all being very attractive and coming into the Christian fold.

And so this was something that really caught the attention of the powers of the Roman Empire and was looked upon as something that could not be tolerated.

And, again, there were times when it became extraordinarily hostile, when they would hunt down Christians wherever they could find them.