PloughBoy
Loyal
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2019
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So the answer was "unsaved" people who hated the people of "The Way". So they coined the name "Christians" meaning those who followed a "heretic" who claim himself as the son of God! A blasphemer! A practice of godless ways. In other words a "Atheists". "And they were first called "Christians" in Acts 11:26. By pagans. A short note: below for clarification, and not destruction.The Greek word Χριστιανός (Christianos), meaning "follower of Christ",
comes from Χριστός (Christos), meaning "anointed one"
The answer to your question is in Acts 11:26
So it has been with the name ‘Christian.’ It was given at the first by the inhabitants of the Syrian city of Antioch, to a new sort of people that had sprung up amongst them, and whom they could not quite make out. They would not fit into any of their categories, and so they had to invent a new name for them. It is never used in the New Testament by Christians about themselves. It occurs here in this text; it occurs in Agrippa’s half-contemptuous exclamation: ‘You seem to think it is a very small matter to make me-me, a king!-a Christian, one of those despised people!’ And it occurs once more, where the Apostle Peter is specifying the charges brought against them: ‘If any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf {1 Peter 4:16}. That sounds like the beginning of the process which has gone on ever since, by which the nickname, flung by the sarcastic men of Antioch, has been turned into the designation by which, all over the world, the followers of Jesus Christ have been proud to call themselves. Shalom