Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode we're

going to look at the history of the church. So what do I mean by that? Well first

let's take a look at the church around the world.

One statistic informs us that there are 300,000 churches,

that is congregations, local congregations

across the United States.

Another statistic tells us that if we go out to the globe and look around

the world, we're looking at 37 million churches, local congregations across the globe.

I have a simple mile commute to work and over that mile commute I go by four

churches. I used to live up in Lancaster and as I would drive around in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

I tended to count silos. These would be the grain and the corn silos attached

to farms and churches. I don't know how many of the 37 million churches in the world were in Lancaster,

but a lot of them were up there. Archaeologists tell us that the oldest church dates back to 2.30 a.D.

This is in Northern Jordan.

It's a fascinating building. It's actually underground and there's an

inscription on the floor. Remember this is the time of persecution. This is the time

where the church and Christians are persecuted by the Roman Empire and so this is

literally an underground church building that was built and they're inscribed

in the floors this inscription the 70 beloved by God so there it is this congregation of 70 people dating back to the

200th AD. Of course the earliest churches were actually house churches and they were

synagogues where the members of the synagogue converted to Christianity and it became a church.

And since those churches they have spread all around the globe.

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