Before class
The table of emperors on p. 92 is the page to keep handy here: it gives each persecuting emperor with Adams’ own words from his band. Read it with the rest of pp. 90–93. Print Big-Print Stretch 12 and tape the four sheets together. Cut ten small red paper crosses and one gold one, or use red and gold sticky dots instead. Mark Matthew 24, Luke 21, Revelation 1–2 and Matthew 16 in your Bible, and bring a coin from your pocket.
Opening · 5 minutes
Fish an ordinary coin out of your pocket and ask, “Whose picture is on this, and why would a country put pictures on its money?” Take a few answers. Then show the gold coin on p. 90 and say: “Rome made this coin to boast. It shows a woman crying under a palm tree, and the words around it say Judea captured. A generation earlier, Jesus had looked at the Temple and said that not one stone would be left upon another. Today we are going to see what Rome did next to the people who followed Jesus, and how Adams shows the way it ended.”
At the chart · 15 minutes
1The city and the coin. Find “Jerusalem taken & destroyed” near the top left of p. 90 and read Adams’ date, Sep. 8, 70 A.D. Then read Luke 21:20 and Matthew 24:2 aloud. Ask your students to find the coin, IVDEA CAPTA, and tell them what the words mean. Then point to the Coliseum and read who finished it, Titus, about A.D. 79, and let someone notice that the man who took Jerusalem is the same man who finished Rome’s arena. The two pictures belong to one story (pp. 90, 92).
2Count the red crosses. Give out your red paper crosses and let children place one on the wall strip each time the class finds a cross on the chart: ten in all, from Nero’s near the bottom left to Diocletian’s on p. 91. Read what Adams writes beside the first two, Martyrdom of Paul and Banishment of John to Patmos. Warn them about the trap on p. 91: the little numbered flags, 249, 260, 323 and 388, are battles, not persecutions. Use the table on p. 92 to name each emperor as you go.
3One column, two crosses. Put your finger on Diocletian’s cross, 303 to 313, and ask the class to slide straight down the same column until they find a cross of a different color. When they reach the gold one, read In hoc signo vinces and Adams’ note about Constantine’s vision in 313, and place your gold cross there. Name the rule, Key 6 · Same column, same moment. Then ask them to find “331, Heathen temples in Rome destroyed” under the words Roman Galley: within a generation, Rome’s own temples are coming down (pp. 91, 93).
4The church in the open. Move to the top right and show the red circles of the councils at Constantinople, 381, “350 bishops attend,” and Ephesus, 431. Tell the class the first council, at Nice in 325, sits just above the spread, and read Adams’ note from p. 92: 318 bishops, the Nicene Creed formed. Ask why a church just out of persecution would want to write down what it believed. Close the walk at the right edge with “Alaric and Goths in Rome 410,” the bridge to Section 13 (pp. 91–93).
Talk it over · 15 minutes
Christians would not sacrifice to Rome’s gods or to the emperor. Why do you think Rome treated that refusal as a crime against the state?
Listen for: Listen for the link the book makes on p. 92: the refusal was treated as being an enemy of the state, because Christians kept their worship for Christ alone. If the talk drifts into politics, bring it back to what the believers on the chart actually suffered.
Adams calls Marcus Aurelius “a virtuous stoic philosopher,” yet the fourth persecution falls in his reign. What does that tell you?
Listen for: Good answers notice that a ruler admired for his virtue could still persecute, and connect it to 2 Timothy 3:12, “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” If someone decides Adams made a mistake, point to the table on p. 92, where both facts sit in one row.
Diocletian’s red cross and Constantine’s gold one share a column. Was the emperor’s favor only good news for the church, or could it bring dangers of its own?
Listen for: Let both sides speak. Listen for Psalm 146:3, “Put not your trust in princes,” and for Julian’s return to the old gods two years later, which shows how quickly an emperor’s favor could change.
To close
“Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”Romans 8:37 · KJV
Lord, we remember those who were faithful unto death on these pages, and we pray for believers who suffer for your name today.
With younger children (6–10)
Ten red crosses make a counting game. Let the children count out loud as they place their paper ones, all the way to ten, and then find the gold cross and say what color it is. Ask them to find the coin and the tree on it, a palm tree, and the big round building, the Coliseum. Tell them simply that Rome tried very hard to stop people from following Jesus, and that by the gold cross even the emperor believed.