Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

A pair of recent discoveries underscore just how quickly and how far-reaching Christianity spread in the first century.

They also counter the long-standing assumption that Christianity is just a Western thing.

Earlier this month, Egyptian archaeologists

revealed the discovery of a 1600-year-old mural that depicts Jesus healing the sick. Of course,

the history of Christianity in Egypt goes way back to the time of Jesus. The Bible describes the

time that Jesus spent there with his family, and the church's presence dates there back to the time of the apostles.

Now, less well known is just how early and how far Christianity also spread into Arabia.

Last month, the United Arab Emirates announced the discovery of a 1600-year-old stucco plaque that features a Christian cross.

It was found on the island of Sier Banayas,

near Abu Dhabi, among the remains of a monastery discovered back in 1962. The plaque is a significant

discovery for what is the first major archaeological dig on this site. And it points to an all-forgotten

bit of history, how the Nestorian Church

of the East, centered in today's Iran and Iraq, spread Christianity through the Arabian

Peninsula during the 4th through 6 centuries. This monastery was eventually abandoned after the rise

of Islam in the 8th century, and it was soon forgotten. And like the monastery, large swathes of

Christian history have also been widely forgotten. Christianity is mostly seen today as a Western

religion, and the spread of the church remembered mostly as what happened within the Roman Empire.

However, until about the year 1,000, there were more Christians outside of the old Roman Empire

than within it. Christian missionaries entered the Persian Empire, Rome's ancient enemy,

in the second century, and quickly established a church there. In the fourth century,

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