Willie Robertson

It just doesn't happen outside the church.

I mean, you may have pockets of it, but the movement...

that has brought human flourishment to the world has happened through the church.

And so I think that what's at stake here is more about, well, who gets to hold the keys to power?

I think the whole thing is a power dynamic.

And so the Christians were like, man, we're doing our own thing.

Like, yes, there's prosperity that's happening.

There's human flourishing is going on.

That wasn't the issue they had.

The issue they had is that they wouldn't pay their so-called rent by sacrificing to the gods, and they viewed this as – I love the way that Dr. Calvert talked about this.

It was like they had this cultural heritage that Rome believed was core to their identity and their prosperity, and they thought that the Christians not participating in –

The idolatry was actually eroding their cultural heritage and their national identity, which would lead to their demise.

And so they're like, no, we have to go after these people because what they're doing is undermining the very thing that led to our prosperity, not realizing that actually –

What the Christians were doing would actually lead to much more prosperity than they could have ever fathomed.

But in this particular case, they didn't see that.

And so that was one of the big reasons why they persecuted the church.

Don't you think that the Jews probably thought the same thing when they martyred Stephen?

Yeah.

Do you think Saul thought, you know what?

We got this thing licked.