In Rick Wade’s Persecution of the Early Church he describes some of the reasons and purposes behind the early church persecution we see in history. One of the interesting relations we see in his article is how he relates the identity of the church to secret societies. This association was prevalent in the suspicion of how the leaders of the time would treat early Christians. This developed fear in the minds of the people in that time. In addition, Wade describes how Christianity was essentially a new cult crossing cultural and geographical boundaries and that people felt threatened by this oddball religion. The second problem was that simply the Christians didn’t want to do the religious pagan activities of the day. Because of this they were considered anti social. Lastly Wade discusses the Christians lack of worship to the emperor essentially making them an enemy of the state. AS the article continues the Wade lists all of the emperors that pursued the Christians for persecution and ends his article with some very interesting reflections for our time today. Near the end he quotes Tertullian, “The blood of Christians is seed,” from Tertullian’s Apology. Identifying that it was the persecution of the early church that caused its greatest growth. In Apostolic History of the Early Church by Don Fanning describes the time of the Pax Romana or Roman Peace. He describes in detail the lengths of the roman roadways and how the peace had helped to spread Christianity specifically with Paul’s ministry. Travel during this period of peace, as fanning states, is would permit people to move greater distances than were capable before, upwards of 20 miles a day. He does an excellent job of painting a picture for the reader to understand the peace, how it affected travel and the impact it had to remove fear from