Establishment of Churches - Churches established by A.D. 35 – Part 1

Church History: Caesarea – Established during Philips Second Journey; Acts 8:26 – 40
A city three or four miles east of Dan, near the eastern source of the Jordan; anciently called Paneas, now Banias, from an adjacent grotto dedicated to Pan, from which one of the sources of the Jordan flowed. It stood where the mountains south-west of Hermon join the plain above lake Huleh, on an elevated plateau surrounded by ravines and water-courses; and its walls were thick and strong. It was enlarged and embellished by Philip the tetrarch of Trachonitis, and called Caesarea in honor of Tiberius Caesar; and the name Philippi was added to distinguish it from Caesarea on the Mediterranean. Our Savior visited this place shortly before his transfiguration, Matthew 16:13-28; Marr 8:27-38; Luke 9:18,27. After the destruction of Jerusalem, Titus here made the captive Jews fight and kill each other in gladiatorial shows. In the time of the crusades it underwent many changes, and is not a paltry village amid extensive ruins.10

Capernaum – An early Church often visited during Christ’s Ministry; Luke 4:31
This was a city on the north-west corner of the sea of Tiberias. It is not mentioned in the Old Testament, but is repeatedly in the Gospels. Though it was once a city of renown, and the metropolis of all Galilee, the site it occupied is now uncertain. When Mr. Fisk, an American missionary, travelled in Syria in 1823, he found twenty or thirty uninhabited Arab huts, occupying what are supposed to be the ruins of the once exalted city of Capernaum.2