German researchers find an old grave.  

And we mean really, really old. Almost 1,800 years old. A body was buried in the spot in present-day Frankfurt, Germany, between the years 230 and 270. Back then, the land belonged to Rome. The city was called Nida.  

In Nida, it seems, Christianity was alive and well—and earlier than people thought.  

How do we know?  

The grave held a skeleton. The skeleton wore a small, silver amulet around his neck. (An amulet is a type of jewelry that wearers believe provides protection.) You could also call this piece of jewelry a phylactery (fill-ACK-tuh-ree). It contained a rolled sheet of silver foil.  

What would you do if you found such a mysterious treasure? Probably unroll the foil, right? 

Researchers, too, wanted to know what words the silver foil might contain. But experts at Frankfurt’s Archaeological Museum decided not to uncoil the sheet. Unrolling could easily make the delicate material crumble. They X-rayed it. But they still couldn’t read the message. They needed tomography—a type of 3-D imaging.  

“Sometimes it took me weeks, even months, to come up with the next idea,” says Goethe University professor Markus Scholz. “I consulted experts from the history of theology, among others, and bit by bit we approached the text together and finally deciphered it.” 

The amulet tells us about the wearer. Most inscriptions like these were written in Greek or Hebrew. This author wrote in Latin. That means he was probably well educated.  

Even more importantly, the writing shows he was likely a Christian.  

Some of the text is missing. But it’s clearly a message about believing in Jesus. Part of the inscription reads, “Holy, holy, holy! In the name of Jesus Christ, Son of God!” 

Why? God has spread His truth throughout the world since creation. Nothing can stop Him.