On this episode of five minutes in church history, we're going to go back in time again,

and we're also going to go to a faraway place.

Well, I guess far away if you're in the United States.

We're going to go to a place that looks like it's pronounced a lion, but this is in France,

and so we would call it Lyon.

In Lyon, there was a church that started early in the second century, and right from the beginning,

this church faced persecution.

Now in those days it was not called Lyon it was just part of Roman Gaul and so or

Roman France and it was under the control of the Roman Empire.

Now by this time the Caesars had sort of pulled back from persecuting the church,

but there was still plenty of persecution that was happening in the church.

It tended to reflect the issues

or the attitudes towards Christianity of the local officials. And in Leon, the local officials

had it out for the Christians. In fact from the very beginning they attacked the church

that was there. We have a nice record of this for us preserved in the early church

historian Eusebius. He left us a wonderful book called The History of the Church, and in this book he recounts the challenges and the persecutions that the Church at Leon faced.

Eusebius writes, first of all, they endured nobly the injuries heaped upon them by the

populace.

Clamers and blows and dragging and robberies and stonings and imprisonment and all the things

which an infuriated mob delight in inflicting

on enemies and adversaries.

Now it mentions there that they were beaten and mentions their robings.

...