Many Christians refer to one of Jesus’ final recorded statements as his great commission. As commonly translated, one might also consider it Jesus’ great imperative:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
However, the italicized words render a Greek participle that might just as well be understood to embrace a wider spectrum of circumstances: As you go, make disciples of all nations …
Such a conception of the centrifugal forces that would scatter followers of Jesus across the Roman empire during the first decades of the movement would fit well with other instruction from Jesus regarding the reality of flight and expulsion that would befall some of his followers.
As adversaries of Christian faith continue to discover in our day, an irrepressible spirit animates what can still with some adjustments be called a movement. Suppression of it rarely accomplishes its desired end and often creates conditions under with a contagious faith infects those who were supposed to inter it.
The book of Acts captures some of this innate resistance to extinction in its incipient stage:
And when an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to mistreat them and to stone them, the apostles learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding country; and there they continued proclaiming the good news.
Even in flight, the message of these people was not silenced. Indeed, new populations came under its sway.
Irrepressible.
Canter Bridge 
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