Knowledge of the first days of the Christian church is very limited. Information about the earliest stages in the life of Christian fellowship that formed after the resurrection is meager. As far we can tell, from the New Testament documents all of the first Christians were Jews. That is because Jesus’ own ministry was limited to Galilee and Judea areas. The disciples he gathered around Him were Jews. Consequently the community they formed after the resurrection, that is the church in its earliest stages, was a sect within Judaism. They continued to observe and participate in Jewish cultic practices. They shared many of the convictions, hopes, beliefs, and prejudices of religious Jews. The major distinctive feature of their religious faith was their belief that Jesus was the Messiah whom God had upheld and vindicated with the resurrection. The first Christians, the Jewish Christians, found confirmation for their belief in the correspondence of their experience with the expectations of Jewish Scriptures. The Jews believed that the spirit of God had been uniquely with God’s people, Israel, from the time of the Patriarchs and of Moses through the time of the prophets. But then the presence of His spirit had been withdrawn. There scriptures anticipated that the time of the Messiah would be the time when God would return to the presence of his spirit to Israel. The first Christians were convinced that the spirit of prophecy had been restored by God as a feature of their community life. The first Christians believed that God wanted them to tell others that the end of the world was near, that Jesus was the end-time Messiah; that God was reasserting his right to rule. Early Christ preaching developed in two directions. The church sought to continue and extend the message which the disciples had heard Jesus preach during his time on earth: “the kingdom of God is at hand” Mark 1:15, Matthew 10:7. And second, the preaching about Jesus himself. One of the most helpful ways the early church had of responding to questions from the Jews was to tell stories about Jesus. These stories were based on recollection, which his disciples had of events that had happened or things that had been said during their association with Jesus. Stories, which spoke most directly to questions that were being asked, those narrative that seemed to call forth the clearest understanding, were the stories used most often.