Now for that latest piece in God’s Invisible Jigsaw from Dr Jurgen Buhler, President International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem:

A special call to 100 days of prayer and fasting to heal the rift between the Church and the Jewish people
By Dr. Jürgen Bühler, ICEJ President

‘This year many churches around the world are commemorating 1700 years since the landmark Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. According to Church historian Philip Schaff, Nicaea was – next to the Apostolic council in Jerusalem in Acts chapter 15 – “the most important and the most illustrious of all the councils of Christendom.” (1)

Nicaea was only the second global council since the days of the original Apostles. In Acts 15, we read about the very first church council discussing how to deal with the new phenomena of Gentiles joining a predominantly Jewish church. In that Jerusalem gathering, the early Apostles had opened wide the door for Gentile believers to join the Church.

Nicaea impacted the Church in a similarly powerful way. But unlike the Jerusalem council, at Nicaea the doors of the Church began to be firmly close on the Jewish people. The umbilical cord was cut between the Church and Israel, even though it was the nation and people who had birthed the Church. It also opened the door for growing anti-Jewish tendencies among Gentile Christians in the following centuries.

To be clear, this development was neither planned nor intended when the council was first called. Yet what made Nicaea end with a very different result from its inception was not inspired by spiritual leaders as in Acts 15, but by the Roman emperor himself.

Emperor Constantine, who reigned from 306 to 337 AD, was a new convert to Christianity. This brought a tremendous sense of relief for the early Church, which had just survived one of the worst waves of persecution a few years earlier under Emperor Diocletian. Constantine not only eased the fears of the Church but decided to make his newly-found faith the most official religion of the Roman Empire….’

Continue reading at https://www.icej.org/blog/1700-years-after-nicaea/