Every Knee Shall Bow (Constantine's Empire Book #2) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Bryan Litfin

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248 pages

English

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The year is AD 316. Imperial persecution has ended, but Christianity's future still hangs in the balance. Will churches rise in Rome where pagan temples once stood? Will the true Scriptures replace the myths of the gods? Will Jupiter finally bow the knee to the Lord Jesus?For the first time in history, the Roman emperor supports the church. Bishop Sylvester sends Flavia from her convent to seek Emperor Constantine's permission to build great churches and determine the canon of Scripture. But the enemies of God are on the move. Joined by Rex, Flavia's beloved protector who has fought his way out of exile, the two friends cross the empire by land and sea on an epic quest to free the Roman people from the tyranny of the ancient gods.Bristling with tension and undergirded by impeccable historical research, this tale of courage, defiance, and humble submission to God continues the captivating saga of two unlikely allies in the age of imperial Christianity.

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Christianity

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	12 octobre 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493431892
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0648€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Praise for The Conqueror
“Bryan Litfin brings a historian’s background to the story he tells about Constantine the conqueror, giving you a feel for the time and actions of a historic figure. This is still fiction, but it tells a good story well. Enjoy.”
Darrell Bock , Executive Director for Cultural Engagement, Howard G. Hendricks Center for Christian Leadership and Cultural Engagement; senior research professor of New Testament studies
“With an eye for detail and an engaging fictional story, Dr. Bryan Litfin makes history come alive. If you’ve ever wondered what life was like for early believers, you will love The Conqueror .”
Chris Fabry , author and radio host
“ The Conqueror is a wonderful mix of excellence in storytelling and keen insight into the setting’s historical context. This is what you get when a historian crosses over the authorial divide into the world of fiction. Read this book! Read all of Bryan’s books! They are enjoyable from beginning to end. This is certainly on my list of Christmas presents for the readers in my family.”
Benjamin K. Forrest , author and professor
“A deftly crafted and fully absorbing novel by an author who is an especially skilled storyteller.”
Midwest Book Review
“I thoroughly enjoy a well-researched novel concerning ancient Rome and Litfin did not disappoint. The Conqueror is filled with rich Roman history and lush tidbits of the early church in Rome. If you’re a fan of this time period and history, it will definitely need to find a way to your bookshelf.”
Write- Read- Life
“Entertaining and overall well-done. Litfin gives readers an enjoyable and thought-provoking story with relevant theological themes.”
Evangelical Church Library
Half Title Page
Books by Bryan Litfin
C ONSTANTINE ’ S E MPIRE
Book 1: The Conqueror
Book 2: Every Knee Shall Bow
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2021 by Bryan M. Litfin
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-3189-2
This is a work of historical reconstruction; the appearances of certain historical figures are therefore inevitable. All other characters, however, are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Dedication
To my mother, Sherri Litfin, who first showed me what a godly woman looks like
Maps
Contents
Cover
Praise for The Conqueror
Half Title Page
Books by Bryan Litfin
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Maps
Historical Note
The Dynasty of Constantine (Chart)
Gazetteer of Ancient and Modern Place Names
Glossary
Prologue
Act 1: Navigation
1
2
3
4
Act 2: Expedition
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Act 3: Revelation
12
13
14
15
Epilogue
About the Author
Back Ads
Cover Flaps
Back Cover
Historical Note
T HE C ONSTANTINE’ S E MPIRE TRILOG Y TAKES PLACE in the fourth century after Christ, when the Roman Empire was starting to be Christianized. By this I do not mean that earlier Christians had done no evangelism. The church had been growing for about three hundred years before the time setting of these novels. What was happening now, in the early 300s, was that the Roman Empire itself was in the process of accepting the Christian faith as its official state religion.
Emperor Constantine initiated this radical change. Unlike previous emperors who ignored, favored, or persecuted the church but remained pagans, Constantine actually converted to the new faith. A major turning point came as an important battle drew near. Constantine experienced a heavenly vision of the cross, followed by a dream in which Jesus (so he believed) told him to mark his soldiers’ shields with a Christian symbol. He went on to defeat his opponent at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in AD 312. Since the emperor attributed the victory to Jesus, he immediately issued a letter that instructed his governors to restore Christians’ property and not persecute them anymore. These dramatic historical events provided the basic plotline for book 1 of this series, The Conqueror .
Constantine also gave money for the Christians to build beautiful new churches and make expensive copies of the Bible. Some people believe this means Constantine founded the Roman Catholic Church. But this isn’t true. The characters in my novels cannot be considered Roman Catholics in the strict sense of the term. Instead, they were part of the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. The word catholic means “universal.” Ancient believers used the term to describe Christianity’s worldwide unity. It is anachronistic to read later terminology or controversies back into previous times. I have tried to present the spirituality of the early church just as it was in the fourth century, without imposing modern categories on ancient people. That is why I use the word catholic with a little c —to describe the ancient and universal body of Christ, not a specific institution.
Another aspect of ancient terminology that might be confusing to today’s reader is the word pope . The Latin word papa, from which we get pope and papacy in English, simply meant “father.” In the early fourth century, papa was a term of respect for one’s paternal bishop, whether in Rome, Alexandria, or some other place. Only later did the term come to define the bishop of Rome alone. So when you read about Pope Sylvester in this story, you should think of him as a fatherly, pastoral, and respectable figure. That is what papa meant at the time.
A third term that might be confusing is nun. We tend to think of nuns as women wearing distinctive garb who have made lifelong vows never to marry but to live hidden away in a convent. However, ancient Christian monasticism—for both men and women—was a much more fluid situation in the early fourth century. Many different ascetic lifestyles were being tried by various individuals and groups. In the case of Flavia, Cassi, and Sophronia, we should picture them not as modern nuns following a formal rule but as women who had, for a time, made vows of devotion and celibacy as they came to live in a shared house. They were not expected to maintain this for their entire lives. They could leave the convent for important purposes and were free to exit the sisterhood altogether if life demanded it.
Modern readers might also find the characters’ delay of baptism strange. Christians today are baptized either as babies or relatively soon after their conversion. Children or teenagers often take this important step before reaching adulthood. But in the first few centuries of church history, baptism was so important that people did not enter into it quickly. They remained unbaptized until they were absolutely certain they could accept the challenges and hardships—including the risk of torture and death—that being a Christian entailed. Infant baptism did not become the standard practice in Christendom until after the time period of this trilogy. That is why my characters have to confront the issue of when they should be baptized.
In any historical novel, some of the core events are real, while others are part of the fictional story the author is telling. Perhaps you may wonder about my book: What parts of it actually happened?
In the book’s fourth-century setting, the Roman Empire was indeed ruled by an Imperial College consisting of two emperors called augusti and two junior emperors called caesars. The creation of this so-called Tetrarchy led to a lot of murderous competition and civil war. The report of Bassianus’s assassination attempt on Constantine’s life at Senecio’s instigation is found in the historical sources. Licinius did cast down his brother-in-law Constantine’s statues at Emona. Then Constantine and Licinius fought each other at two major (yet inconclusive) battles at Cibalae and the Mardian Plain. They reached a tentative peace at Serdica in 317.
After this stabilizing moment, Constantine embarked on a major church-building campaign around the empire, including at Rome. It was through his imperial patronage, or that of his immediate successors, that some of Rome’s greatest churches were built: the Lateran Basilica of the Savior and its baptistery (today called the Papal Archbasilica of St. John Lateran); St. Peter’s Basilica; the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls; and San Sebastiano, which is the church that now stands over the original catacombs, or burial grounds of the early Christians. In addition to these, a large hall in Helena’s Sessorian Palace was transformed into Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (which supposedly preserves fragments of the Holy Cross, along with ancient soil from Jerusalem). Today there is also a beautiful church, the Basilica of Santa Sabina, on the site of Flavia’s imaginary house on the Aventine Hill. That building, however, dates from a century later than the age of Constantine, so I only describe a hypothetical house church in this trilogy. All these churches can be visited in Rome today, though they have been modified or completely reconstructed over time.
Also, the Patriarchal Basilica of Aquileia in northern Italy preserves the incredible paleo-Christian mosaics described in the story, as commissioned by Bishop Theodore in the early fourth century.
What about the bones of Saint Peter? Beneath the altar of today’s St. Peter’s Basilica, encased within the rubble of many intervening centuries, lies a little structure called the Trophy of Gaius. This was a marker that the ancient Christians erected