Page 92 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

A History of the Church in Africa

must rejoice in a heritage from which we may learn valuable lessons.
We have only touched the surface of what might be learned from further
field research, possibly a dissertation at the doctoral level. Will someone
accept the challenge?

While the primary focus of this segment of the chapter is to provide
a brief review of the history of the Nubian church and to examine why
it collapsed, my goal is also to share
the reports of a fresh outpouring of
the Holy Spirit that is occurring in
The Pentecostal the land of ancient Nubia (Sudan).

church is showing The Pentecostal church is showing
positive growth, even in times of
positive growth, persecution. Some of our fellow

even in persecution. laborers are seeing people follow
Jesus are leading the church to victory.
Perhaps Sudan will once again be a
key to reach North Africa, the Middle
East, and other nations with the good news.

The Ethiopian Church

We have followed the expansion of Christianity southward from
Egypt along the Nile Corridor through Nubia. Several kingdoms were
greatly impacted by the Christian witness along the corridor. The
sequence of Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia is inconsequential. There is
enough evidence to prove that Christians could be found all along
the corridor in the early centuries. We now turn to the spread of
Christianity in Ethiopia.

As Hildebrant notes: “Origen of Egypt, who lived from 185 to 253,
mentions in one of his books that the gospel was preached to the
‘Ethiopians’ but not all of them had been reached at that time” (21). This
may have been a reference to the larger area of Nubia and Abyssinia—
the Nile Corridor. Latourette, in tracing the expansion of Christianity
from the time of Constantine to A.D. 500, states: “In several other
regions, however, it (Christianity) registered marked gains, notably
Ireland, in the upper part of the Nile Valley, in Arabia, and in what later
became known as Abyssinia” (1970, 1:173).

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