The Spreading Flame Quotes

“His reply to their complaint was that, if they had availed themselves of the opportunity to accept the good news themselves, then they could have fulfilled their true mission of evangelizing the God-fearers and other Gentiles.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“For the Jews, as the people of God, had the right to hear the good news first, not only for their own sakes, but in order that they might actively fulfil Israel’s appointed mission to carry the good news to the Gentiles.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“The important cities lying along the great highways of empire should be the special object of their attention, for if the gospel could be planted in them, it would spread out to the surrounding territory.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“There is reason to believe that some at least of the Jerusalem leaders regarded Barnabas and Paul’s undertaking to remember “the poor” as an acknowledgment of the Jerusalem church’s right to receive a sort of tribute from the Gentile Christians (much as the Jerusalem temple exacted an annual contribution from Jews throughout the world).”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“In later times they became rarer, partly because the churches became suspicious that not all who claimed to practise the prophetic gift were genuine prophets, partly because the growth of ecclesiastical organization left little room for such unarranged ministry, and partly, no doubt, because their numbers were actually less.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“The work of Christ had the effect of implanting in those who were united to Him by faith the desire and the power to carry out the law’s requirements, not by painstaking conformity to an external standard, but by the operation of the Spirit of Christ within.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“The form of the argument was such as Paul was perfectly familiar with in the rabbinical schools, but no rabbi had ever been so audacious as to formulate this particular argument—that the Messiah himself should assume the curse denounced upon the breakers of God’s law in order to liberate them from that curse. But Paul’s conclusion was inevitable. That Jesus was indeed the Messiah He was now sure, but Jesus had died an accursed death. The scandal of the cross, at which Paul had stumbled for so long, was resolved into the saving act of God.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“Those who claimed that Jesus had been raised from the dead were proved true witnesses, for Paul had now seen the risen Lord for himself and heard Him speak. Jesus, raised from the dead, was manifestly the object of the divine approval. God had reversed the curse involved in His death.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“Blinded by excess of light,”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“(for the people of Jerusalem would not tolerate a threat to the temple).”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“The messianic application of Old Testament prophecies which the earliest Christians used was that which they had learned from their Master himself.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“The reading of the Hebrew scriptures in the synagogues was regularly accompanied in those days by the recitation of a paraphrase in the Aramaic vernacular of Palestine and the lands farther east.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“The Nazarenes met in each other’s houses day by day for a communal meal in the course of which they remembered Jesus with thanksgiving as they partook of bread and wine.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“There was one young Pharisee in particular, a pupil of Gamaliel, who discerned that the new community contained within itself a seed which when it sprouted would split the edifice of Judaism from top to bottom.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“The choice of this term was a further indication of the early Christians’ conviction that they were the legitimate successors of the true Israel, bound by God to Himself in covenant relationship from the days when Israel first became a nation.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“Does the coincidence of improbabilities amount to sheer impossibility, so that we conclude the picture is a cunningly wrought invention? Or is the picture that of God incarnate, in whom the “improbabilities” coincide like a threefold cord that is not quickly broken?”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“George Lyttelton might well declare, just over 200 years ago, that “the conversion and apostleship of St. Paul alone, duly considered, was of itself a demonstration sufficient to prove Christianity to be a divine revelation.”156”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“On the contrary, it was only when they were convinced by overwhelming evidence that He had indeed come to life again that they realized how impossible it was that He should have remained dead, and how foolish they had been not to grasp this before.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England

“But, said these disciples of His, God knew that His claim was true and He reversed the Sanhedrin’s sentence and its execution by raising Jesus from death.”
― F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to Eighth-Century England