In The Beginning
Like
San Francisco Philippi exploded into existence because somebody found
gold. Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, was the
toughest man in the region and he promptly collared the mines and called
the area Philip’s Town. Then they discovered precious springs
of water, one, then two and then three. So they pluralised the town’s
name and it became Philippi. The Macedonian used the gold to fund his
wars against Greece and anyone else who got in his way.
About
three hundred years later the city became famous for something else. In
March 44 BC Julius Caesar went down until a hail of flashing knives and
the scene was sent for the battle of Phillipi that took place in 42.
One the one side was Brutus and the skinny Cassius of whom Julius said,
"Let me have about me men that are fat. Yon Cassius hath a lean and
hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.” (Or something
like that.) On the other side were Mark Anthony and the shrewd Octavian.
Four of the most powerful men in the world and they were about to fight
to make a name for themselves. Well, maybe Brutus was the “noblest
Roman of them all” and had no personal ambition but the others were
brawling to see at whose feet people would fall and confess them to be
lord.
When
the smoke cleared Cassius was dead and Brutus, cursing the gods, took
his own life beside the river where Lydia and her friends came to pray
to the true God (Acts 16). Later when Octavian had dealt with Mark
Anthony and had taken the name Augustus on becoming Rome’s first emperor
he remembered Philippi. He always thought that the battle of Philippi
was his critical and victorious moment so when he became emperor he made
the town an imperial province. This meant their citizenship was in Rome
with all the advantages that came with that. They had Roman support and
Roman laws and in so many ways they lived a life pleasing to the
emperor across the sea. If they’d been asked who their lord was they
would have pointed to the name plastered on every street-corner, in
every shopping centre, on theatre marquees and bus-station wall.
Life could hardly have been better.
It
was into this piece of Rome outside of Italy, where Augustus and his
successors were venerated as “Lord,” that a little Jew came proclaiming
that “Jesus” was Lord.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.