Skip to main content

Persecution and the spread of the Gospel



By Mike Ratliff - Posted at Possessing the Treasure:

14 You are My friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. 17 This I command you, that you love one another.
18 “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. John 15:14-19 (NASB)

I have been reading through the book of Acts over the last few weeks and I followed it up with a documentary about the Book of Acts in which every verse was read and acted out on the screen. It is very interesting to see the spread of Christianity as the Apostles obediently made disciples wherever they went. This spread was always accompanied by persecution. The hotter the persecution the more encouraged the brethren became. While that is not logical to the fallen mind, that is exactly how God grew His church. In the early 2nd century the bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp who was a disciple of the Apostle John, was brought to the Roman authorities and ordered to confess that Caesar is lord. Polycarp was eighty-six years old at this point. All he had to do was utter that statement as he offered a pinch of incense to Caesar, but he refused. He was martyred by fire.

What we must never forget when looking at these things that the result of Polycarp’s martyrdom, for instance, was that through it Christians who witnessed his stand were inspired to remain faithful. Again, this is illogical to the fallen mind, but my brethren, we must never forget that God’s ways are not our ways.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Christian leader shot in the head while preaching at Glendale street corner

Image Source:  Christian leader shot in the head while preaching at Glendale street corner (msn.com) By Ben Bradley - Posted at Arizona's Family:  Published November 16, 2023 GLENDALE, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) — A congregation is in shock after a beloved religious leader was shot in the head while preaching on a Glendale street corner on Wednesday night. In an update on Friday morning, Glendale police say 26-year-old Hans Schmidt, a husband and father of two, remains in critical condition. It happened on the northwest corner of 51st and Peoria avenues around 6 p.m. Friends say Hans Schmidt was standing with a megaphone on the street corner, preaching the gospel to people passing by, something he’d apparently done countless times before. Only this time, someone pulled out a gun and shot him. Friends and family can’t understand why. “Who knows why someone would want to take it out on a preacher like that because he’s speaking the gospel and good news to everybody. He’s out to help the commun

'Bomb the churches': Trans-identified man indicted for threats to sexually assault Christian girls

Screenshot of video showing booking photo for Jason Lee Willie, of Nashville, Illinois. Screenshot/YouTube/SocialLifestyle By Ian M. Giatti - Posted at The Christian Post: Court docs: Suspect identified as 'open pedophile,' vowed 'many more and larger attacks on Christians' Published November 27, 2023 A trans-identified Illinois man and alleged self-described “pedophile” is facing charges for making social media threats to sexually assault Christian girls and commit copycat attacks similar to the attack at a Christian school in Tennessee earlier this year. Jason Lee Willie of Nashville, Illinois, was charged Nov. 7 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois with 14 felony counts of interstate communication of a threat to injure, according to a federal indictment . The threats, which are dated between March and August, include repeated references to Christians, black Americans, the Republican Party, and others. Among the alleged threats cited in the in

Thanksgiving and our Christian heritage

By Angela Wittman "Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people."   ( 1 Chronicles 16:8, KJV ) While preparing for the gathering of family and friends this Thanksgiving season, let’s not forget to also prepare our hearts in humble gratefulness to God for the blessings and grace which He has bestowed upon us as individuals and as a nation. Here is a bit of history about Thanksgiving which you may not have been taught in school as taken from the website “A Puritan’s Mind” by Dr. C. Matthew McMahon : The celebration we now popularly regard as the ‘First Thanksgiving’ was the Pilgrims' three-day feast celebrated in early November of 1621 (although a day of thanks in America was observed in Virginia at Cape Henry in 1607)... The Pilgrims left Plymouth, England, on September 6, 1620, sailing for a new world that offered the promise of both civil and religious liberty. The Pilgrims had earlier left England in 1608, as the Church of England