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In this history of the early Christian Church, Professor Bruce divides the complex story into three sections. The first, The Dawn of Christianity, deals with the Church from its infancy to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The second section, The Growing Day, continues the story up to the accession of Constantine in A.D. 313 and the Church’s consequent official status. Light in the West, the final part, is about Christianity in Rome and its spread to the British Isles after the barbarian invasion. The picture that emerges is of the Church as an unquenchable spiritual force organized for tribulation, whose spiritual resources are never more unlimited than in times of seeming disaster. A wealth of quotations from Jewish and classical sources, combined with F.F. Bruce’s straightforward style, make this book a valuable contribution to the study of the history of the Church.​

The child in Bethlehem would grow up to be a friend of sinners, not a friend of Rome. He would spend his life with the ordinary and the unimpressive. He would pay deep attention to lepers and cripples, to the blind and the beggar, to prostitutes and fishermen, to women and children. He would announce the availability of a kingdom different from Herod’s. A kingdom where blessings—full value and worth with God—was now conferred on the poor in spirit and the meek and the persecuted. People would not understand all this meant. According to pastor and bestselling author John Ortberg in Who Is This Child, we still do not. But a revolution was starting, a slow, quiet, movement that began at the bottom of society and would undermine the pretensions of the Herods. It was a movement that was largely underground, like a cave around Bethlehem, where a dangerous baby was born and hidden from a king. Strange reversal. Men who wore purple robes and glittering crowns and gaudy titles began to look ridiculous. And yet the figure of the child born in a manger only grew in stature. Adapted from John Ortberg’s book, Who Is This Man?