Stephen 

Jesus and his younger brother Simon traveled to Passover in Jerusalem in 17 CE, stopping at several places on the way and back. They met many people during this three-week trip. Perhaps the most notable of all these contacts was with a Hellenist (Greek) Jew named Stephen. This young man was on his first visit to Jerusalem and chanced to meet Jesus on Thursday afternoon of Passover week. While they strolled around the city, Jesus began a casual conversation that resulted in their becoming interested in each other, leading to a four-hour discussion of the way of life and the true God and his worship. Stephen was tremendously impressed by Jesus and never forgot what he said.

As he grew to manhood, Stephen became a bold preacher of the teachings of Jesus. Some of Stephen’s extraordinary boldness in proclaiming his view of the new gospel was the direct result of his earlier conversation with Jesus. But Stephen never even faintly guessed that the Jesus he had talked with during his youth was the same person he later proclaimed as the world’s Savior.After Jesus was executed, there was a period of peaceful relations between Jesus’ believers and the Pharisee and Sadducee leaders in Jerusalem. However, Stephen and other Greeks were not tradition-bound and began to preach more as Jesus taught, preaching in a way that did not conform to the Jewish mode of worship and other ceremonial practices. This brought them into immediate conflict with the Jerusalem rulers and terminated peaceful relations between them and the Jesus brotherhood.

When Stephen became the leader of the Greek colony of Jesus' believers in Jerusalem, his sermons attracted the attention of the religious authorities. His teachings, like those of Jesus, clashed with tradition. In one of Stephen’s public sermons, when he reached an objectionable part of the discourse, his enemies dispensed with all formalities of trial and proceeded to stone him to death on the spot. Reportedly, Stephen’s last words were: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60).

Little did the Pharisees and Sadducees realize that Stephen’s martyrdom would be the specific cause for the formal organization of the early Christian church. With Stephen’s stoning, believers recognized they could no longer go on as a sect within the Jewish faith. They all agreed that they must separate themselves from unbelievers, and within one month of the death of Stephen, the church at Jerusalem had been organized under the leadership of Peter, and James, the brother of Jesus, was installed as its head.

When Stephen yielded up his life as the price of his attack upon the Jewish temple and its traditional practices, it was witnessed by a Greek man named Saul, a citizen of Tarsus. When Saul saw how this fellow Greek could die for his faith, those emotions aroused in his heart, eventually leading him to espouse the cause for Stephen's death. Later, he became the aggressive and indomitable Paul, the philosopher and one of the principal founders of the Christian religion.

Stephen’s faith and courage, his willingness to die rather than renounce his belief in the teachings of Jesus, have echoed down the halls of history and inspired believers and seekers in every generation since. Stephen was sainted by Catholic, Anglican, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, and Lutheran churches and the Church of the East. He is honored on various feast days, principally December 26. One of the gates of the city of Jerusalem is named Saint Stephen’s Gate. Churches in North America, Australia, Europe, and Asia bear his name. Where he died is a matter of debate, but the reason he died, and his final words of forgiveness for his murderers, earned Stephen a place of honor and respect that can never be erased or forgotten.