4. World Changers: The Baby Savers of Ancient Rome
In ancient Rome, the Paterfamilias had absolute rule over his family. It was the antithesis of Biblical patriarchy where fathers were commanded in God's Law to love, provide for, and protect their offspring. This was not the case in Pagan Rome.
A Roman father had the legal right to kill his own children for whatever reason. He might do it out of fear that he had too many mouths to feed. The rich would kill their babies because they didn’t want to divide up their wealth amongst too many children.
Babies who had any sign of deformities were left to die. If a Roman husband suspected his wife cheated on him and the baby might not be his, he had the right to kill it. In the end, Pagan fathers were autonomous, a law unto themselves, when it came to the power of life and death over his children. He could kill his offspring on a whim with no consequences.
The most common way to kill unwanted babies was to "expose" them. To "expose" an infant meant they were left to die on a garbage heap from starvation or exposure to the cold or as food for marauding packs of Roman dogs. Either way, it was a cruel and horrifying death, the sacred right of Paganism.
According to Cicero, Caesar Augustus killed his own granddaughter Julia's illegitimate children through exposure. This is the same Caesar spoken about in Luke 2:1. He was called "Augustus" because the word "august" meant to be "inspiring reverence and admiration; majestic; solemnly grand or stately; sublime; magnificent; imposing." As Caesar, everyone including himself considered him to be the paragon of virtue in the Roman Empire.
Recent DNA testing reveals that this wicked culture did not discriminate between the sexes. Boys were killed through exposure just as much as girls. Evil has no favorites.
Some believe this death was a blessing for these little ones. Brothel owners harvested the infants for the thriving child sex trafficking industry of Rome. If the pimps didn't get them, slave traders would, condemning them to a life of pain, turmoil, and servitude.
This went on far too long until a people, transformed by the power of the resurrected Christ, obeyed their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. At night, these faithful Christians would sift through the garbage dumps and slosh through cesspools to gather these little ones. The infants that didn't survive were laid to rest in baby-sized tombs deep in the Catacombs beneath the Roman Empire's bustling streets.
Because of these Bible-believing Christians' tireless efforts and sacrifice, the practice of exposure was eventually outlawed in the Roman Empire. These simple, kind, and obedient Christian believers were true world changers.