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I have found truly jubilant Christians only in the Bible, in the Underground Church and in prison.
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Richard Wurmbrand (Tortured for Christ)
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For two centuries, Christians would be a persecuted minority. There was no worldly reward for being Christian. Being a follower of Christ took courage. The twelve apostles, and their first-century co-workers, suffered tribulation and sometimes death as they fulfilled the Great Commission Jesus had given them (Matt 28:19–20). They turned an iron empire upside down and changed our world forever.
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James Allen Moseley (Biographies of Jesus' Apostles: Ambassadors in Chains)
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Christ didn't join in. He saw which direction the rocks were being thrown, and became a shield.
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Criss Jami (Healology)
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The short life of Jesus can hardly compare with the suffering of brave heretics who have been persecuted for criticizing Christianity, or with the agony of the “witches” who were burned, drowned and hanged by bible believers (quoting Exodus 22:18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”). Nor
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Dan Barker (Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists)
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admire the ingenuity that goes into this but I am not at all convinced that such people have quite got the right end of the stick. Does God really want us to know, in exact detail, ancient Babylonian history? I suspect not. But I am confident that God does want us to know how people in circumstances of acute displacement, living with the fear and the anxiety of a persecuted minority, responded to a hostile state and a pagan power.
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Rowan Williams (Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer)
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And so we have one of the great ironies of the early Christian tradition. The profoundly Jewish religion of Jesus and his followers became the viciously anti-Jewish religion of later times, leading to the horrific persecutions of the Middle Ages and the pogroms and attempted genocides that have plagued the world down to recent times.6 Anti-Semitism as it has come down to us today is the history of specifically Christian reactions to non-Christian Jews. It is one of the least savory inventions of the early church.
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Bart D. Ehrman (Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them))
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Persecuting Christians because of Jesus Christ is like a man who goes after the children of his enemy because he is indeed afraid of his enemy. Matthew 24:9
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Felix Wantang (God's Blueprint of the Holy Bible: Volume Two)
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We are all fighting the same enemy. If you read through the Bible, you will find that. Read through the subsequent history of the Christian church, and you will find that God’s people in times of persecution have always been driven together and cemented together in a much closer manner than they had ever been at any other time. They are fighting the same common foe, so they draw together. And as Christians become fewer in number year by year in this country, it should have this effect upon us: we are aware of one another, and we draw closer together; our love for one another is increased because of our circumstances.
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D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Experiencing the New Birth: Studies in John 3)
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But if we are all God’s children, why does God spend so much time in history ordering one branch of his universal family to wipe out another branch? Why did his love for his Jewish children have to be expressed by the extermination of his Palestinian children? Why did he later abandon his Jewish children in favour of his Christian children and encourage his new favourites to torment their older siblings? Why did he order his Muslim children who worship him as One to persecute his pagan children who worship him as Many? Why is there so much violence in religious history, all done by groups who claim God is on their side?
Unless you are prepared to believe that God actually plays favourites like some kind of demented tyrant, then there are only two ways out of this dilemma. The obvious one is to decide that there is no God. What is called God is a human invention used, among other things, to justify humankind’s love of violence and hatred of strangers. Getting rid of God won’t solve the problem of human violence but it will remove one of its pretexts.
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Richard Holloway (A Little History of Religion)
“
Lakini damu na maji vina maana kubwa katika maisha yetu. Biblia inaeleza kuwa wakati Yesu Kristo akiwa msalabani alichomwa ubavu wake kwa mkuki, ikatoka damu na maji, ndipo zilipozaliwa sakramenti za kanisa. Aidha, tukio la askari wa Kirumi kumchoma Yesu na damu na maji kutoka lina maana nyingine kubwa katika maisha yetu. Hapo ndipo Ukristo ulipozaliwa; na ni kwa sababu hiyo mwanamke anapojifungua hutoa damu na maji kutokana na kupasuka kwa utando wa mfuko wa uzazi. Kutokana na hayo, Wakristo wanapoabudu msalaba wanaeleza umuhimu wa matukio na mafundisho waliyopata kupitia mateso aliyopata kiongozi wao na kuwa, msalaba ni chombo cha ukombozi.
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Enock Maregesi
“
Every disciple is a believer, but not every believer is necessarily a disciple. Anything short of discipleship, however, is settling for less than what God really desires for us.
Loving God more than anyone or anything else is the very foundation of being a disciple. If you want to live your Christian life to its fullest, then love Jesus more than anyone or anything else.
Either you will have harmony with God and friction with people, or you will have harmony with people and friction with God.
You become a disciple in the biblical sense only when you are totally and completely committed to Jesus Christ and His Word.
As a true disciple, your life won’t only be characterized by practical results and a hunger for Scripture, but you also will have love for others — especially fellow believers. Without all of these characteristics, you can’t really claim to be His disciple.
A person who has been with Jesus will boldly share his or her faith.
A person who has been with Jesus will be a person of prayer.
A person who has been with Jesus will be persecuted.
If for you, the Christian life is all about feeling good and having everything go your way, then you won’t like being a disciple. Being a follower of Christ is the most joyful and exciting life there is. But it also can be the most challenging life there is. It’s a life lived out under the command of someone other than yourself.
Most prayers are not answered because they are outside the will of God. Once we have discovered God’s will, we can then pray aggressively and confidently for it. We can pray, believing it will happen, because we know it is not something we have dreamed.
A forgiven person will be a forgiving person. A true disciple will harbor no grudge toward another. The disciple knows it will hinder his or her prayer life and walk with God.
It is far better to sit down for an hour and talk genuinely with one person than to rattle off trite clichés to scores of people.
Attending more Bible studies, more prayer meetings, reading more Christian books, and listening to more teaching without an outlet for the truth will cause us to spiritually decay. We need to take what God has given us and use it constructively in the lives of others.
You were placed on earth to know God. Everything else is secondary.
The more we know God, the more we should want to make Him known to a lost world.
Your life belongs to God. You don’t share your time and talents with Him; He shares them with you! He owns you and everything about you. You need to recognize and acknowledge that fact.
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Greg Laurie (Start! To Follow: How to Be a Successful Follower of Jesus Christ)
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A time of painful testing, even persecution, is coming. Lukewarm or shallow Christians will not come through with their faith intact. Christians today must dig deep into the Bible and church tradition and teach themselves how and why today’s post-Christian world, with its self-centeredness, its quest for happiness and rejection of sacred order and transcendent values, is a rival religion to authentic Christianity.
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Rod Dreher (Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents)
“
What a revolution! In less than a century the persecuted church had become a persecuting church. Its enemies, the “heretics” (those who “selected” from the totality of the Catholic faith), were now also the enemies of the empire and were punished accordingly. For the first time now Christians killed other Christians because of differences in their views of the faith. This is what happened in Trier in 385: despite many objections, the ascetic and enthusiastic Spanish lay preacher Priscillian was executed for heresy together with six companions. People soon became quite accustomed to this idea. Above all the Jews came under pressure. The proud Roman Hellenistic state church hardly remembered its own Jewish roots anymore. A specifically Christian ecclesiastical anti-Judaism developed out of the pagan state anti-Judaism that already existed. There were many reasons for this: the breaking off of conversations between the church and the synagogue and mutual isolation; the church’s exclusive claim to the Hebrew Bible; the crucifixion of Jesus, which was now generally attributed to the Jews; the dispersion of Israel, which was seen as God’s just curse on a damned people who were alleged to have broken the covenant with God . . . Almost exactly a century after Constantine’s death, by special state-church laws under Theodosius II, Judaism was removed from the sacral sphere, to which one had access only through the sacraments (that is, through baptism). The first repressive measures
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Hans Küng (The Catholic Church: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles Series Book 5))
“
As we have seen so often in this book, religion may begin with mystical experiences but it always leads to politics. It starts with the voice heard by the prophets who are its chosen instruments. And what they hear always leads to actions that affect the way people live: with politics. Sometimes the politics are bad. People are persecuted for following the wrong faith or for listening to the wrong voice. Or they are forced to embrace the message announced by the latest hot prophet. So the history of religion becomes a study in different forms of oppression. But sometimes the politics are good. They are about liberation, not oppression. We saw good politics in the stand the Pennsylvanian Quakers made against slavery in 1688. And in the African American Church today the politics of Christianity are still about liberation. The tactics of Moses and the promises of Jesus are used to make the world a better place. Religion is no longer used as an opiate to dull the pain of injustice and inequality but as a stimulant to overcome it. That’s what keeps many people in the religion game.
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Richard Holloway (A Little History of Religion)
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If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If the Pentateuch was inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword and flame.
In the Old Testament no one is told to reason with a heretic, and not one word is said about relying upon argument, upon education, nor upon intellectual development—nothing except simple brute force. Is there to-day a christian who will say that four thousand years ago, it was the duty of a husband to kill his wife if she differed with him upon the subject of religion? Is there one who will now say that, under such circumstances, the wife ought to have been killed? Why should God be so jealous of the wooden idols of the heathen? Could he not compete with Baal? Was he envious of the success of the Egyptian magicians? Was it not possible for him to make such a convincing display of his power as to silence forever the voice of unbelief? Did this God have to resort to force to make converts? Was he so ignorant of the structure of the human mind as to believe all honest doubt a crime? If he wished to do away with the idolatry of the Canaanites, why did he not appear to them? Why did he not give them the tables of the law? Why did he only make known his will to a few wandering savages in the desert of Sinai? Will some theologian have the kindness to answer these questions? Will some minister, who now believes in religious liberty, and eloquently denounces the intolerance of Catholicism, explain these things; will he tell us why he worships an intolerant God? Is a god who will burn a soul forever in another world, better than a christian who burns the body for a few hours in this? Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven? Do the angels all discuss questions on the same side? Are all the investigators in perdition? Will the penitent thief, winged and crowned, laugh at the honest folks in hell? Will the agony of the damned increase or decrease the happiness of God? Will there be, in the universe, an eternal auto da fe?
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Robert G. Ingersoll (Some Mistakes of Moses)
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When Christians maintain that homosexual behavior is sinful or that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, you can count on a chorus of voices declaring confidently that these old views are on the “wrong side of history.” The phrase is meant to sting. It conjures up pictures of segregationists clinging to their disgusting notions of racial supremacy. We are meant to think of the church persecuting Galileo or of flat-earthers warning Columbus about sailing off the edge of the world. The phrase seeks to win an argument by not having one. It says, “Your ideas are so laughably backward, they don’t deserve to be taken seriously. In time everyone who ever held them will be embarrassed.
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Kevin DeYoung (What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality?)
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Religious intolerance is an idea that found its earliest expression in the Old Testament, where the Hebrew tribe depicts itself waging a campaign of genocide on the Palestinian peoples to steal their land. They justified this heinous behavior on the grounds that people not chosen by their god were wicked and therefore did not deserve to live or keep their land. In effect, the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian peoples, eradicating their race with the Jew's own Final Solution, was the direct result of a policy of religious superiority and divine right. Joshua 6-11 tells the sad tale, and one needs only read it and consider the point of view of the Palestinians who were simply defending their wives and children and the homes they had built and the fields they had labored for. The actions of the Hebrews can easily be compared with the American genocide of its native peoples - or even, ironically, the Nazi Holocaust.
With the radical advent of Christianity, this self-righteous intolerance was borrowed from the Jews, and a new twist was added. The conversion of infidels by any means possible became the newfound calling card of religious fervor, and this new experiment in human culture spread like wildfire. By its very nature, how could it not have? Islam followed suit, conquering half the world in brutal warfare and, much like its Christian counterpart, it developed a new and convenient survival characteristic: the destruction of all images and practices attributed to other religions. Muslims destroyed millions of statues and paintings in India and Africa, and forced conversion under pain of death (or by more subtle tricks: like taxing only non-Muslims), while the Catholic Church busily burned books along with pagans, shattering statues and defacing or destroying pagan art - or converting it to Christian use. Laws against pagan practices and heretics were in full force throughrout Europe by the sixth century, and as long as those laws were in place it was impossible for anyone to refuse the tenets of Christianity and expect to keep their property or their life. Similar persecution and harassment continues in Islamic countries even to this day, officially and unofficially.
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Richard C. Carrier (Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism)
“
Every church became a theatre, where orators, instead of church teachers, harangued, caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and to preach only novelties and paradoxes, such as would tickle the ears of their congregation. This state of things necessarily stirred up an amount of controversy, envy, and hatred, which no lapse of time could appease; so that we can scarcely wonder that of the old religion nothing survives but its outward forms (even these, in the mouth of the multitude, seem rather adulation than adoration of the Deity), and that faith has become a mere compound of credulity and prejudices—aye, prejudices too, which degrade man from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the power of judgment between true and false, which seem, in fact, carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark of reason! Piety, great God! and religion are become a tissue of ridiculous mysteries; men, who flatly despise reason, who reject and turn away from understanding as naturally corrupt, these, I say, these of all men, are thought, O lie most horrible! to possess light from on High. Verily, if they had but one spark of light from on High, they would not insolently rave, but would learn to worship God more wisely, and would be as marked among their fellows for mercy as they now are for malice; if they were concerned for their opponents’ souls, instead of for their own reputations, they would no longer fiercely persecute, but rather be filled with pity and compassion. Furthermore, if any Divine light were in them, it would appear from their doctrine. I grant that they are never tired of professing their wonder at the profound mysteries of Holy Writ; still I cannot discover that they teach anything but speculations of Platonists and Aristotelians, to which (in order to save their credit for Christianity) they have made Holy Writ conform; not content to rave with the Greeks themselves, they want to make the prophets rave also; showing conclusively, that never even in sleep have they caught a glimpse of Scripture’s Divine nature. The very vehemence of their admiration for the mysteries plainly attests, that their belief in the Bible is a formal assent rather than a living faith: and the fact is made still more apparent by their laying down beforehand, as a foundation for the study and true interpretation of Scripture, the principle that it is in every passage true and divine.
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Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
“
In a sense the rise of Anabaptism was no surprise. Most revolutionary movements produce a wing of radicals who feel called of God to reform the reformation. And that is what Anabaptism was, a voice calling the moderate reformers to strike even more deeply at the foundations of the old order. Like most counterculture movements, the Anabaptists lacked cohesiveness. No single body of doctrine and no unifying organization prevailed among them. Even the name Anabaptist was pinned on them by their enemies. It meant rebaptizer and was intended to associate the radicals with heretics in the early church and subject them to severe persecution. The move succeeded famously. Actually, the Anabaptists rejected all thoughts of rebaptism because they never considered the ceremonial sprinkling they received in infancy as valid baptism. They much preferred Baptists as a designation. To most of them, however, the fundamental issue was not baptism. It was the nature of the church and its relation to civil governments. They had come to their convictions like most other Protestants: through Scripture. Luther had taught that common people have a right to search the Bible for themselves. It had been his guide to salvation; why not theirs? As a result, little groups of Anabaptist believers gathered about their Bibles. They discovered a different world in the pages of the New Testament. They found no state-church alliance, no Christendom. Instead they discovered that the apostolic churches were companies of committed believers, communities of men and women who had freely and personally chosen to follow Jesus. And for the sixteenth century, that was a revolutionary idea. In spite of Luther’s stress on personal religion, Lutheran churches were established churches. They retained an ordained clergy who considered the whole population of a given territory members of their church. The churches looked to the state for salary and support. Official Protestantism seemed to differ little from official Catholicism. Anabaptists wanted to change all that. Their goal was the “restitution” of apostolic Christianity, a return to churches of true believers. In the early church, they said, men and women who had experienced personal spiritual regeneration were the only fit subjects for baptism. The apostolic churches knew nothing of the practice of baptizing infants. That tradition was simply a convenient device for perpetuating Christendom: nominal but spiritually impotent Christian society. The true church, the radicals insisted, is always a community of saints, dedicated disciples in a wicked world. Like the missionary monks of the Middle Ages, the Anabaptists wanted to shape society by their example of radical discipleship—if necessary, even by death. They steadfastly refused to be a part of worldly power including bearing arms, holding political office, and taking oaths. In the sixteenth century this independence from social and civic society was seen as inflammatory, revolutionary, or even treasonous.
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Bruce L. Shelley (Church History in Plain Language)
“
May God’s people never eat rabbit or pork (Lev. 11:6–7)? May a man never have sex with his wife during her monthly period (Lev. 18:19) or wear clothes woven of two kinds of materials (Lev. 19:19)? Should Christians never wear tattoos (Lev. 19:28)? Should those who blaspheme God’s name be stoned to death (Lev. 24:10–24)? Ought Christians to hate those who hate God (Ps. 139:21–22)? Ought believers to praise God with tambourines, cymbals, and dancing (Ps. 150:4–5)? Should Christians encourage the suffering and poor to drink beer and wine in order to forget their misery (Prov. 31:6–7)? Should parents punish their children with rods in order to save their souls from death (Prov. 23:13–14)? Does much wisdom really bring much sorrow and more knowledge more grief (Eccles. 1:18)? Will becoming highly righteous and wise destroy us (Eccles. 7:16)? Is everything really meaningless (Eccles. 12:8)? May Christians never swear oaths (Matt. 5:33–37)? Should we never call anyone on earth “father” (Matt. 23:9)? Should Christ’s followers wear sandals when they evangelize but bring no food or money or extra clothes (Mark 6:8–9)? Should Christians be exorcising demons, handling snakes, and drinking deadly poison (Mark 16:15–18)? Are people who divorce their spouses and remarry always committing adultery (Luke 16:18)? Ought Christians to share their material goods in common (Acts 2:44–45)? Ought church leaders to always meet in council to issue definitive decisions on matters in dispute (Acts 15:1–29)? Is homosexuality always a sin unworthy of the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9–10)? Should unmarried men not look for wives (1 Cor. 7:27) and married men live as if they had no wives (1 Cor. 7:29)? Is it wrong for men to cover their heads (1 Cor. 11:4) or a disgrace of nature for men to wear long hair (1 Cor. 11:14)? Should Christians save and collect money to send to believers in Jerusalem (1 Cor. 16:1–4)? Should Christians definitely sing psalms in church (Col. 3:16)? Must Christians always lead quiet lives in which they work with their hands (1 Thess. 4:11)? If a person will not work, should they not be allowed to eat (2 Thess. 3:10)? Ought all Christian slaves always simply submit to their masters (reminder: slavery still exists today) (1 Pet. 2:18–21)? Must Christian women not wear braided hair, gold jewelry, and fine clothes (1 Tim. 2:9; 1 Pet. 3:3)? Ought all Christian men to lift up their hands when they pray (1 Tim. 2:8)? Should churches not provide material help to widows who are younger than sixty years old (1 Tim. 5:9)? Will every believer who lives a godly life in Christ be persecuted (2 Tim. 3:12)? Should the church anoint the sick with oil for their healing (James 5:14–15)? The list of such questions could be extended.
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Christian Smith (The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture)
“
Eighteen centuries have now passed away since God sent forth a few Jews from a remote corner of the earth, to do a work which according to man's judgment must have seemed impossible. He sent them forth at a time when the whole world was full of superstition, cruelty, lust, and sin. He sent them forth to proclaim that the established religions of the earth were false and useless, and must be forsaken. He sent them forth to persuade men to give up old habits and customs, and to live different lives. He sent them forth to do battle with the most grovelling idolatry, with the vilest and most disgusting immorality, with vested interests, with old associations, with a bigoted priesthood, with sneering philosophers, with an ignorant population, with bloody-minded emperors, with the whole influence of Rome. Never was there an enterprise to all appearance more Quixotic, and less likely to succeed! And how did He arm them for this battle? He gave them no carnal weapons. He gave them no worldly power to compel assent, and no worldly riches to bribe belief. He simply put the Holy Ghost into their hearts, and the Scriptures into their hands. He simply bade them to expound and explain, to enforce and to publish the doctrines of the Bible. The preacher of Christianity in the first century was not a man with a sword and an army, to frighten people, like Mahomet,—or a man with a license to be sensual, to allure people, like the priests of the shameful idols of Hindostan. No! he was nothing more than one holy man with one holy book. And how did these men of one book prosper? In a few generations they entirely changed the face of society by the doctrines of the Bible. They emptied the temples of the heathen gods. They famished idolatry, or left it high and dry like a stranded ship. They brought into the world a higher tone of morality between man and man. They raised the character and position of woman. They altered the standard of purity and decency. They put an end to many cruel and bloody customs, such as the gladiatorial fights.—There was no stopping the change. Persecution and opposition were useless. One victory after another was won. One bad thing after another melted away. Whether men liked it or not, they were insensibly affected by the movement of the new religion, and drawn within the whirlpool of its power. The earth shook, and their rotten refuges fell to the ground. The flood rose, and they found themselves obliged to rise with it. The tree of Christianity swelled and grew, and the chains they had cast round it to arrest its growth, snapped like tow. And all this was done by the doctrines of the Bible! Talk of victories indeed! What are the victories of Alexander, and Cæsar, and Marlborough, and Napoleon, and Wellington, compared with those I have just mentioned? For extent, for completeness, for results, for permanence, there are no victories like the victories of the Bible.
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J.C. Ryle (Practical Religion Being Plain Papers on the Daily Duties, Experience, Dangers, and Privileges of Professing Christians)
“
Psalm 108 (109) 1For the End; a psalm by David.†ω O God, do not pass over my praise in silence, 2 For the mouth of the sinner and the mouth of the deceitful man opened against me; They spoke against me with a deceitful tongue; 3 And they surrounded me with words of hatred, And warred against me without cause. 4 Instead of loving me, they falsely accused me, But I continued to pray; 5 So they repaid me evil for good, And hatred for my love. 6 Set a sinner over him, And let the devil stand at his right hand. 7 And when he is judged, may he go forth condemned, And let his prayer become sin. 8 Let his days be very few, And may a different man receive his office; 9 Let his children be fatherless And his wife a widow; 10 Let his children wander about and be beggars; Let them be cast out of their houses. 11 Let the creditor search out whatever possessions he has; Let strangers plunder his labors; 12 Let there be no helper for him, Nor a compassionate one for his fatherless children; 13 Let his children be utterly destroyed; In a single generation, let his name be blotted out. 14 May the lawlessness of his fathers be remembered before the Lord, And may the sin of his mother not be blotted out; 15 Let them be continually before the Lord, And may the remembrance of them be utterly destroyed from the earth, 16 Because he did not remember to show mercy, But persecuted a poor and needy man, And one pierced to the heart, that he might kill him. 17 And he loved cursing, and it came to him, And he did not desire blessing, so it shall be far from him. 18 So he clothed himself with cursing like a garment, And it entered like water into his bowels And like oil into his bones; 19 Let it be for him like a garment that clothes him, And like a belt that girds him continually. 20 This is the work of those who falsely accuse me before the Lord, And of those who speak evil things against my soul. 21 But You, O Lord, O Lord, deal mercifully with me for Your name's sake, For Your mercy is good. 22 Save me, for I am poor and needy, And my heart is troubled within me. 23 I was removed like a shadow when it declines; I was shaken off like the locusts. 24 My knees were weak from fasting, And my flesh was changed because of the oil. 25 And I became an object of reproach to them; They saw me; they shook their heads. 26 Help me, O Lord my God; Save me according to Your mercy; 27 Then let them know this is Your hand, And You, O Lord, did this. 28 They themselves shall curse, but You shall bless; Let those who rise up against me be put to shame, But let Your servant be glad. 29 Let those who falsely accuse me be clothed with shame, And let them be covered with their dishonor like a double cloak. 30 I will give thanks to the Lord abundantly with my mouth, And in the midst of many I will praise Him, 31 Because He stood at the right hand of a poor man, To save me from those who persecute my soul.
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Anonymous (The Orthodox Study Bible: Ancient Christianity Speaks to Today's World)
“
1 Peter: Early Christians often met violent opposition, and Peter’s letter comforted and encouraged Christians who were being persecuted for their faith. 2 Peter: In contrast to Peter’s first letter, this one focused on problems that sprang up from the inside. It warns against false teachers. 1 John: John could fill simple words, such as light, love and life, with deep meaning, and in this letter he elegantly explains basic truths about the Christian life. 2 John: Warning against false teachers, John counseled churches on how to respond to them.
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Philip Yancey (NIV, Student Bible)
“
during the Roman persecution of Christians, authorities demanded offerings of incense and wine, not animal sacrifice, as demonstrations of loyalty to the state religion.
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Jeremy Davis (Welcoming Gifts: Sacrifice in the Bible and Christian Life)
“
EUSEBIUS [Chronicles, Anno 2083] (beginning October, A.D. 67), says, "Nero, to his other crimes, added the persecution of Christians: under him the apostles Peter and Paul consummated their martyrdom at Rome." So JEROME [On Illustrious Men], "In the fourteenth year of Nero, Paul was beheaded at Rome for Christ's sake, on the same day as Peter, and was buried on the Ostian Road, in the thirty-seventh year after the death of our Lord." ALFORD reasonably conjectures the Pastoral Epistles were written near this date. The interval was possibly filled up (so CLEMENT OF ROME states that Paul preached as far as "to the extremity of the west") by a journey to Spain (Rom 15:24, 28), according to his own original intention. MURATORI'S Fragment on the Canon of Scripture (about A.D. 170) also alleges Paul's journey into Spain. So EUSEBIUS, CHRYSOSTOM, and JEROME. Be that as it may, he seems shortly before his second imprisonment to have visited Ephesus, where a new body of elders governed the Church (Acts 20:25), say in the latter end of A.D. 66, or beginning of 67. Supposing him thirty at his conversion, he would now be upwards of sixty, and older in constitution than in years, through continual hardship. Even four years before he called himself "Paul the aged" (Philemon 1:9).
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Robert Jamieson (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown's Commentary on the Whole Bible (best navigation with Direct Verse Jump))
“
Arabi Azadi Ashiqui
(The Sonnet)
The more you persecute a certain community,
the more you'll find me your fiercest enemy.
Defending that community with my last breath,
I shall remind you of your own utter futility.
The more you dehumanize a certain people,
more you'll find me your uncorrupt impediment.
The people will be safe, even if I'm annihilated -
In the process, world will witness your impotence.
More you criminalize a certain community,
more in my eyes you lose right to dignity.
Honor is earned through behavior, not by
excuse of throne, scripture or nationality.
Systemically propagate fear all you want -
In the end, you're at mercy of my civilian judgment.
Belonging is my bible, conscience is my koran -
Behave like a bully, and I'm your celestial guardian.
Whenever intolerance raises its fangs,
hiding behind menorah, saffron or crucifix,
Every Samaritan must become Samurai -
Every Civilian - Arabi, Azadi, Ashiqui!
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Abhijit Naskar (World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets)
“
The remarkable thing about those statements is not the profundity of their sentiments as such, but that they were expressed in the midst of very difficult times for the church. It was attempting to survive and grow even though targeted for sometimes-vicious persecution by a pagan, cruel, anti-Christian government in Rome. Accusations
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John F. MacArthur Jr. (Why Government Can't Save You: An Alternative to Political Activism (Bible for Life Book 7))
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The very suffering of our persecuted brothers and sisters is creating a deep hunger for the truth of Jesus among many moderate Muslims who express deep hurt, regret, and even anger concerning the atrocities in Iraq. Some even say, “We’ve read the Quran and know that Muhammad himself committed such atrocities. Now we want to learn about Christianity—about Jesus, about the Bible. Please tell us more.
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The Voice of the Martyrs (I Am N: Inspiring Stories of Christians Facing Islamic Extremists)
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Even while we care for the poor, we will be tempted to forget the gospel at every turn. Christian history is unfortunately littered with stories of people who passionately worked on behalf of the poor but subtly loosened their grip on the gospel. The so-called “social gospel” of the twentieth century stripped Christianity of its core truths and set many churches on a course toward theological compromise and biblical heresy. As a result, many Christians who believe the Bible are cautious about care for the poor.
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David Platt (A Compassionate Call to Counter Culture in a World of Poverty, Same-Sex Marriage, Racism, Sex Slavery, Immigration, Abortion, Persecution, Orphans and Pornography)
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The generation brought up during the Great Depression and the Second World War, still in measure steeped in the much-maligned Protestant work ethic, resolved to work hard and provide a more secure heritage for their children. And, in measure, they did. But the children, for whom the Depression and the War belonged to the relics of history, had nothing to live for but more “progress.” There was no grand vision, no taste of genuine want, and not much of the Protestant work ethic either.83 Soon the war in Vietnam became one of the central “causes” of that generation, but scarcely one that incited hard work, integrity in relationships, frugality, self-denial, and preparation for the next generation. That ’60s generation, the baby boomers, have now gone mainstream—but with a selfishness and consumerism that outstrips anything their parents displayed. There is no larger vision. Contrast a genuine Christian vision that lives life with integrity now because this life is never seen as more than the portal to the life to come, including perfect judgment from our Maker. At its best, such a stance, far from breeding withdrawal from the world, fosters industry, honest work for honest pay, frugality, generosity, provision for one’s children, honesty in personal relationships and in business relationships, the rule of law, a despising of greed. A “Protestant work ethic” of such a character I am happy to live with. Of course, a couple of generations later, when such a Christian vision has eroded, people may equate prosperity with God’s blessing, and with despicable religious cant protest that they are preparing for eternity when in their heart of hearts they are merely preparing for retirement. But a generation or two after that their children will expose their empty fatuousness. In any case, what has been lost is a genuinely Christian vision. This is not to say that such a vision will ensure prosperity. When it is a minority vision it may ensure nothing more than persecution. In any case, other unifying visions may bring about prosperity as well, as we have seen. From the perspective of the Bible, prosperity is never the ultimate goal, so that is scarcely troubling. What is troubling is a measuring stick in which the only scale is measured in terms of financial units.
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D.A. Carson (The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism)
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And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, immediately they receive it with joy. 17 But they have no root in themselves; they are short-lived. When pressure or persecution comes because of the word, they immediately •stumble. 18 Others are sown among thorns; these are the ones who hear the word, 19 but the worries of this age, the seduction of wealth, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. 20
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Anonymous (HCSB: Holman Christian Standard Bible)
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As I retold those stories, I watched the faces of the house-church leaders. They were listening in rapt attention. I felt that the Holy Spirit was moving and working in that farmyard. I could sense that these leaders were pulling real biblical principles out of the stories. Then, in the middle of the final story that I was going to tell, I heard a noise, a disturbance. I looked around and, in the back corner, I saw a movement. It was those two brothers that I had tried to interview a little earlier. They were standing up and waving their arms. I couldn't imagine what they were doing. I tried to ignore them, hoping that no one would notice the commotion. But they rushed forward. Weaving their way through the crowd, they made their way toward the platform. I tried in vain to figure out some way to keep them from coming up on the stage. As they drew closer though, I could tell that they were crying. Instinctively, I moved back and gave way. By the time they stepped up on the platform, they were shaking and sobbing. They said to the assembled group: 'Listen to this man! Listen to this man! The stories he tells are true! You can only grow in persecution what you go into persecution with.' Then they opened their hearts to their Christian brothers and sisters seated before them. What they said sounded like a confession: 'You have honored us and you have made us leaders just because the authorities arrested us and we went to jail for three years. But you never, ever asked us our story. We know that when most of you went to prison, you shared your faith, you preached the word of God, and you brought hundreds if not thousands of people to Jesus. You started dozens of churches, and you began a movement that has grown out of the prisons. The Lord used you in a might way. But when we were arrested, we barely knew who Jesus was! We did not know how to pray! We did not know the Bible! We did not know many songs of faith. We have to confess this to you today and beg your forgiveness. For three years in prison we did not share our faith with one person. We hid our faith. And yet, when we came out of prison, you made us leaders just because we had been put into jail. The truth is, we failed Jesus in prison. Would you please forgive us? You must listen to this man! Listen to this man! What he is teaching is true: You can only grow in jail what you take to jail with you. You can only grow in persecution what you take into it.' There seemed to be nothing more that I could add to that. I silently asked for God's forgiveness. I had been upset about my interview with these two brothers. Evidently, God had a purpose in bringing them to the front.
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Nik Ripken
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Can we say as much for what is termed "the religion of Christ?" No! this religion has had the aid of the sword and firebrand, the rack and the thumb-screw. "Persecution," is to be seen written on the pages of ecclesiastical history, from the time of Constantine even to the present day. [444:1] This Christian emperor and saint was the first to check free-thought.
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Thomas William Doane (Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions Being a Comparison of the Old and New Testament Myths and Miracles with those of the Heathen Nations ... Considering also their Origin and Meaning)
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On the latter point, it was sometimes noted that Christians gathered together under the cloak of darkness, calling one another "brother" and "sister" and greeting one another with kisses; they were said to worship their god by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of God. What was one to make of such practices? If you can imagine the worst, you won't be far off. Pagan opponents claimed that Christians engaged in ritual incest (sexual acts with brothers and sisters), infanticide (killing the Son), and cannibalism (eating his flesh and drinking his blood). These charges may seem incredible today, but in a society that respected decency and openness, they were widely accepted. Christians were perceived as a nefarious lot.
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Bart D. Ehrman (Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why)
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DAY 17: How does Paul describe the return of Jesus Christ in 1 Thessalonians 4:15, 16? It is clear the Thessalonians had come to believe in and hope for the reality of their Savior’s return (1:3, 9, 10; 2:19; 5:1, 2). They were living in expectation of that coming, eagerly awaiting Christ. First Thessalonians 4:13 indicates they were even agitated about some things that might affect their participation in it. They knew Christ’s return was the climactic event in redemptive history and didn’t want to miss it. The major question they had was: “What happens to the Christians who die before He comes? Do they miss His return?” Clearly, they had an imminent view of Christ’s return, and Paul had left the impression it could happen in their lifetime. Their confusion came as they were being persecuted, an experience they thought they were to be delivered from by the Lord’s return (3:3, 4). Paul answers by saying “the Lord Himself will descend with a shout” (v. 16). This fulfills the pledge of John 14:1–3 (Acts 1:11). Until then He remains in heaven (1:10; Heb. 1:1–3). “With the voice of an archangel.” Perhaps it is Michael, the archangel, whose voice is heard as he is identified with Israel’s resurrection in Daniel 12:1–3. At that moment, the dead rise first. They will not miss the Rapture but will be the first participants. “And with the trumpet of God.” This trumpet is illustrated by the trumpet of Exodus 19:16–19, which called the people out of the camp to meet God. It will be a trumpet of deliverance (Zeph. 1:16; Zech. 9:14). After the dead come forth, their spirits, already with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:23), now being joined to resurrected new bodies, the living Christians will be raptured, “caught up” (v. 17). This passage along with John 14:1–3 and 1 Corinthians 15:51, 52 form the biblical basis for “the Rapture” of the church.
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John F. MacArthur Jr. (The MacArthur Daily Bible: Read through the Bible in one year, with notes from John MacArthur, NKJV)
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I was left an orphan while I was still a child, and we were very poor. Sometimes I would stand for hours on end in ecstasy outside a baker’s shop, gazing with burning desire at the cakes. I would say to myself, ‘These are not for me. I shall never be able to eat anything like this.’ The Bible brings back these memories. Once again I can see wonderful things, but I know that they are not for me, because I am a Jew. I know that there are Jews who have converted to Christianity in order to marry Romanian girls or to escape anti-Semitic persecution. But I have not yet met a Jew who believes in Jesus.
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Richard Wurmbrand (Christ on the Jewish Road)
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Do you have anything else that you’d like to say about “I am the way, the truth and the life”? RG: Yes, on Jesus as the life, because the life is the resurrection. He is the truth we’ve been talking about, nothing but that. The way, of course, is to imitate God, which is to imitate Christ, because if you act like Christ you’re not going to be happier, you’re going to be persecuted. You’ll be happier in a higher sense, but you’re going to be persecuted; but therefore you’re going toward the truth. Thus, ultimately, you’re going toward life because you’re going toward resurrection. So in a way, in these three words, the entire Christian trajectory of Christ himself and of his real disciples is summed up: the way, the truth and the life. The life should be last because it’s about resurrection.
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Michael Hardin (Reading the Bible with Rene Girard: Conversations with Steven E. Berry)
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Following the story line becomes easy when one realizes that the book of Acts is structured on a cyclic principle in which a common pattern keeps getting repeated: (1) Christian leaders arise and preach the gospel; (2) listeners are converted and added to the church; (3) opponents (often Jewish but sometimes Gentile) begin to persecute the Christian leaders; and (4) God intervenes to rescue the leaders or otherwise protect the church. While this pattern is most obvious in the first half of the book, it extends in modified form to the journeys of Paul, whose repeated buffetings are followed by the expansion of the church.
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Anonymous (ESV Study Bible)
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Without dioceses, local parishes and village churches could barely continue, even if the villages themselves could have long survived the constant turmoil and bloodshed. And as we have seen, monasteries and shrines could not last for long in an environment of prolonged warfare. The strength of early and medieval Christianity was that it created a sanctified landscape in which Christian institutions were visible everywhere. The weakness of being so heavily invested in real estate was that it left an almost infinite abundance of tempting targets for plunder and destruction, and once these were gone, so were many of the forces that kept believers attached to the faith. The question must arise as to whether some other kind of organization might have offered a better chance of resisting decline. In theory, we can imagine church structures less dependent on monks and clergy, and lacking the tight hierarchy dependent on the empire’s cities. Retroactively, we could even think of a Christianity that looked more Protestant, in the sense of placing more control and initiative in the hands of ordinary believers, whose decentralized church life would depend less on institutions than on direct access to the scriptures. But such an alternative is difficult to conceive realistically, as monasticism and episcopacy were so deeply en-grained in Eastern tradition, while the Protestant idea of access to the Bible assumes forms of printing technology that would not be feasible until centuries afterward. And the annihilation of European heretics like the Cathars suggests that even quite imaginative forms of clandestine organization could not withstand unrelenting persecution.
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Philip Jenkins (The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died)
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John Bunyan, a Baptist preacher -- John Bunyan, twelve years in Bedford jail -- John Bunyan the author while confined in jail, of the most celebrated and most widely circulated book, next to the Bible, in the whole world. "Pilgrim's Progress" -- John Bunyan, one of the most notable of all examples of the bitterness of Christian persecution.
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J.M. Carroll (The Trail of Blood: Following the Christians down through the centuries -- or, The history of Baptist churches from the time of Christ, their founder, to the present day)
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How wonderful it is to know that we go through no experiences where God is not there in divine companionship, and the hotter the fire the sweeter the fellowship. You know, I can tell you, folks, in my own experience, that whenever I get into a situation where I decide to take a stand for something and it’s the unpopular thing to do, and you start getting flack, you have this tremendous sense of divine companionship. It’s what Peter talked about when he talked about the fact that when we go through persecution, the Spirit of grace and glory rests on us. I had this overwhelming sense of the presence of God strengthening. And here they were in the fiery furnace in divine companionship.
- Uncompromising Faith in the Fiery Furnace, Part 2 (Sermon)
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John F. MacArthur Jr.
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I do not want to love Muslims, even if the Bible tells me I should. I find difficult to love those who persecute me.” “You love your grandfather.” “Of course! He was everything to me.” “He was Muslim.” “He was Christian,” Victoria corrected. “Not always.” Professor Nasir put a pointer finger to his lips and regarded Victoria thoughtfully. “He was once a Muslim, but you were still able to love him. Did you love him because he was Christian?” “No, it was because he was my grandfather and a wonderful man.” “What lived inside him made the difference, not what religion he proclaimed. Is that correct?” “Of course!” “That is how it should be for everyone we meet. We must not judge people based on what we see on the outside. Instead, we must look past things such as religious labels, skin tones, gender, age, and economic status to see what lives within. That is how we fulfill Christ’s teachings.
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Annie Bradley (The Despicable Missionary: How a young girl growing up in Pakistan learned to defend her faith and love Muslims (The Missionaries to America Book 2))
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*The majority of evangelical growth is through conversion. Islam, on the other hand, often uses threats and persecution to build up the ranks. These “conversions” are not based on conviction but are merely “survival techniques.” *Eighty-five percent of the world has a Bible available in their native language. *There have been 6.5 billion viewings of the Jesus film. *It is estimated that when Father Zakaria Botros (a Coptic Christian apologist who debates Islamic clerics) is on television in the Middle East, 60 million viewers watch. Al-Qaeda has honored him with the words “one of the most wanted infidels in the world,” and has put a million dollar bounty on his head. *In Iran, 7
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Thomas Horn (I Predict: What 12 Global Experts Believe You Will See Before 2025!)
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The world’s key strategy is peer pressure. Think of this as a siege tactic. They surround you and use your fear of rejection and reproach to keep you in line with them. One of the greatest things you’ll ever do is divorce yourself from public opinion. Only one opinion matters—what does the Lord Jesus Christ think of you? Along these lines, Paul wrote: Romans 12:2 — And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Are you going to do the will of the world or the will of God? Don’t be afraid to be different. If you want to overcome the world consistently, you’ll need to renew your mind daily. Remember every day that you are not your own; you are bought with a price. Jesus hung on an old rugged cross, despised by the world—rejected of men—so that you could be reconciled to God. Jesus wasn’t ashamed to suffer for us. Don’t be ashamed to stand for Him. Our Savior said: John 15:18 — If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. 19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. 20 Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. The Bible is filled with information about the world and how a Christian should approach it. The following is a series of verses about the word that I hope you will read and study at a later time: John 1:10; 7:7; 8:23; 15:18-25; 17:14; 1 Corinthians 1:20-21; 2:6, 3:18-19; Ephesians 2:2-3; 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:10; James 1:27; 4:4; 2 Peter 1:4; 1 John 2:15-17; 3:1, 13; 4:4; and 5:4.
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Mike Fluech (I Have Found The Book: Now What Do I Do With It?)
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Throughout the letter, the subject of persecution is never far away, whether it be potential, imminent, or incipient (1:6; 2:12, 19–20; 3:13–17; 4:12, 14; 5:8–10). The attacks are blamed not on Jews (although they may have been involved), but on pagans who are baffled and angry by the believers’ “peculiar” manner of life in opting out of so much of everyday practices. As a consequence, they slander Christians as wrong-doers (2:12; 3:16) and abuse them as renegades
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Norman Hillyer (1 & 2 Peter, Jude (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series))
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Religion commandeered both sides of the slavery issue. Lincoln made this point in his Second Inaugural: “Both [sides] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.”8 The bloodshed might have been stemmed were it not for the unmovable certainty religion breeds in the faithful. We might say today that abolitionists motivated by religion were correct to be certain on such an obvious issue, but their brethren south of the Mason-Dixon Line were just as certain, and they had the stronger side of the biblical argument. As William Lloyd Garrison, a leading abolitionist, put it, “In this country, the Bible has been used to support slavery and capital punishment; while in the old countries, it has been quoted to sustain all manner of tyranny and persecution. All reforms are anti-Bible.
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Andrew L. Seidel (The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American)
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All who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim 3:12). So if a believer experiences no form of persecution, it may mean that he or she doesn’t have a faith worth persecuting. Don’t be a secret agent Christian: go public with your trust in Christ.
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Tony Evans (CSB Tony Evans Study Bible: Advancing God’s Kingdom Agenda)
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Followers of Christ are the most widely persecuted religious group in the world.. the most fundamental freedom is the privilege of each person to explore truth about the divine and to live in light of his or her determinations..from the beginning God has given men and women the freedom to decide whether to worship him..God did not (and does not) remove human responsibility..the Bible indicates the importance of willful choice and personal invitation..the gospel message is fundamentally invitation, not coercion..no one can believe except willingly..faith must be free in order to be genuine..What our government calls this "right" is commonly known as the "freedom of worship," but this label can be somewhat misleading because the way it is often applied in our culture unnecessarily and unhelpfully limits the "free exercise" of religion to the private sphere..This is part of the "free exercise" of religion: the freedom of worship not just in episodic gatherings but in everyday life. And it is such "free exercise" that is subtly yet significantly being attacked in American culture today..you have a hard time conceiving how you can participate in a celebration of something that you are convinced God condemns..in your heart you can't avoid the conviction that such participation would dishonor God..while [she] is free to exalt he God in the church she attends, she is not free to express her beliefs in the business she owns..while we have certain obligations to our government, our ultimate obligation is to our God..Church history..contains other examples of shameful attempts to spread Christianity by force or military might..none of this was, or is, right..the search for religious truth is often supplanted by the idolization of supposed tolerance. The cardinal sin of our culture is to be found intolerant, yet what we mean by intolerant is ironically, well, intolerant..the very notion of tolerance necessitates disagreement..I don't tolerate you if you believe exactly what I believe..it would be wise and helpful for us to patiently consider where each of us is coming from and why we have arrived at our respective conclusions..we can then be free to contemplate how to treat one another with the greatest dignity in view of our differences..tolerance applies to people and beliefs in distinct ways..toleration of people requires that we treat one another with equal value, honoring each other's fundamental human freedom to express private faith in public forums..toleration of beliefs does not require that we accept every idea as equally valid, as if a belief is true, right or good simply because someone expresses it. In this way, tolerance of a person's value does not mean I must accept the person's views.."Hey, as long as someone believes something, that makes it right.." Either Jesus is or isn't the Son of God..I lament the many ways that Christians express differences in belief devoid of respect for the people with whom they speak. Likewise, I lament the many ways that Christians are labeled intolerant, narrow-minded, and outdated whenever they express biblical beliefs that have persisted throughout centuries..The more we become like Jesus in this world, the more we will experience what he experienced. Just as it was costly for him to counter culture, it will be costly for us to do the same..It's only when we stand up and counter the culture around them with the gospel of Jesus Christ that they will experience suffering..On the other hand, if they stay quiet, they can remain safe. But they know that in so doing, they will violate their consciences and disobey the commands Christ has given them to share grace and gospel truth with the people around them..in a country where even our own religious liberty is increasingly limited, our suffering brothers and sisters beckon us not to let the cost of following Christ in our culture silence our faith.
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David Platt (A Compassionate Call to Counter Culture in a World of Poverty, Same-Sex Marriage, Racism, Sex Slavery, Immigration, Abortion, Persecution, Orphans and Pornography)
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Christ makes clear that Christianity is not a path to more comforts, higher status, or greater ease in this world..Here are the days when holding fasting to the gospel, actually believing the Bible, and putting it into practice will mean risking your reputation, sacrificing your social status, disagreeing with your closest family and friends, jeopardizing your economic security and earthly stability, giving away your possessions, leaving behind the accolades of the world, and..potentially losing your life..it is not possible to love the poor and live in unabated luxury..authentic tolerance doesn't mask truth but magnifies it, showing us how to love and serve one another in view of our differences..we spend the majority of our time sitting as spectators in services that cater to our comforts. Even in our giving to the church, we spend the majority of our money on places for us to meet, professionals to do the ministry, and programs designed around us and our kids..Jesus' main point is not that going to a funeral is wrong, but that his Kingdom will not take second place to anyone or anything else..Even more important than honoring the dead was proclaiming the Kingdom to those who were dying..Jesus knew that as great as people's earthly needs were, their eternal need was far greater..the ultimate priority of his coming was not to relieve suffering..his ultimate priority in coming to the world was to sever the root of suffering: sin itself..He came not just to give the poor drinking water for their bodies but to give people living water for their souls. He came not just to give orphans and widows a family now but to give them a family forever. He came not just to free girls from slavery to sex but to free them from slavery to sin. He came not just to make equality possible on earth but to make eternity possible in heaven..If all we do is meet people's physical needs while ignoring their spiritual need, we miss the entire point..We testify with our lips what we attest with our lives..giving a cup of water to the poor is not contingent upon that person's confession of faith in Christ..it is in addressing eternal suffering that we are most effective in alleviating earthly suffering..This commission is not just a general command to make disciples among as many people as possible. Instead, it is a specific command to make disciples among every people group in the world..Jesus has not given us a commission to consider; he has given us a command to obey..it seems that Jesus knows as soon as this man returns to his family, the lure to stay will be strong..It is not uncommon for the lure of family love to lead to faithless living..Following Jesus doesn't just entail sacrificial abandonment of our lives; it requires supreme affection from our hearts..I can slowly let indecision become inaction..delayed obedience becomes disobedience..If I'm walking by a lake and see a child drowning, I don't stop and ponder what I should do. Nor do I just stand there praying about what action to take. I do something..My purpose in putting these realities before us is not to cause us to collapse under their weight. To be certain, God alone is able to bear these global burdens..proclaim the gospel not under a utopian illusion that you or I or anyone or everyone together can rid this world of pain and suffering. That responsibility belongs to the resurrected Christ.
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David Platt (A Compassionate Call to Counter Culture in a World of Poverty, Same-Sex Marriage, Racism, Sex Slavery, Immigration, Abortion, Persecution, Orphans and Pornography)
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As Christianity grew, it eventually converted intellectuals to the faith, who were well equipped to discuss and dismiss the charges typically raised against the Christians. The writings of these intellectuals are sometimes called apologies, from the Greek word for “defense” (apologia). The apologists wrote intellectual defenses of the new faith, trying to show that far from being a threat to the social structure of the empire, it was a religion that preached moral behavior; and far from being a dangerous superstition, it represented the ultimate truth in its worship of the one true God. These apologies were important for early Christian readers, as they provided them with the arguments they needed when themselves faced with persecution.
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Bart D. Ehrman (Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why)
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Books were at the very heart of the Christian religion—unlike other religions of the empire—from the very beginning. Books recounted the stories of Jesus and his apostles that Christians told and retold; books provided Christians with instruction in what to believe and how to live their lives; books bound together geographically separated communities into one universal church; books supported Christians in their times of persecution and gave them models of faithfulness to emulate in the face of torture and death; books provided not just good advice but correct doctrine, warning against the false teachings of others and urging the acceptance of orthodox beliefs; books allowed Christians to know the true meaning of other writings, giving guidance in what to think, how to worship, how to behave. Books were completely central to the life of the early Christians.
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Bart D. Ehrman (Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why)
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At about the same time that apologies began to be written, Christians started producing accounts of their persecutions and the martyrdoms that happened as a result of them.
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Bart D. Ehrman (Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why)
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In a now-familiar paradox of punishment it was explained again and again that all these physical attacks were a kindness. The Church persecutes, Augustine said, in the spirit of love. Jerome, the biblical scholar and saint, concurred: it was not cruel to defend God’s honour – in the Bible sinners suffer punishments up to and including death. Chrysostom agreed: if he were to punish your earthly body, he reassured his listeners, it was only to protect your eternal one so that ‘you may be saved, and we may rejoice, and God may be glorified now and always, for ever and ever without end. Amen.’ Those receiving such salvation might, not unreasonably, have felt otherwise. One monk in Shenoute’s care was saved with beatings so savage that he died of his injuries. And what if people, disinclined to rejoice, became frightened by the fact that their neighbours were spying on them, reporting on them, hounding them in their homes? Well, fear too had its benefits. Better to be scared than to sin. ‘Where there is terror,’ said Augustine, ‘there is salvation . . . Oh, merciful savagery!’ The intellectual foundations for a thousand years of theocratic oppression were being laid.
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Catherine Nixey (The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World)
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[W]e tend to over-glamorize persecution, so we get this sense that anyone suffering for their faith must be some sort of super-Christian. [...] I think it's really stunted church growth.
[...]
[P]eople glorify suffering to the point that they'll say things like the American church needs to be persecuted if we want to be purified. And they'll cite China as if it's some big Christian utopia, but [...] persecution has made it so hard to obtain Bibles in China that there might be only one copy of Scripture in the city of a million. Most folks in the west have no idea of all the heresy that can come when people don't have access to God's word.
[...]
[W]hen we treat persecuted believers like super-Christians, we sort of get this feeling like they're so spiritual and lucky to be suffering for their faith they don't even need our prayers. Right? Because we want to assume any Christian who suffers for the gospel is automatically going to be protected, so it's not really suffering. But here's how I look at it. Let's say, heaven forbid, you or I get diagnosed with some fatal illness. Now, for some believers, they're going to have a ton of peace and be completely faithful and trust that whatever God has in store for them, it's part of his perfect will. And some of us are going to handle it a lot different. Same thing with persecution.
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Alana Terry (Captivated (Kennedy Stern #9))
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The problem is not the conflict of opposites in itself, but rather a probing of surprising and difficult dimensions of what is entailed by trust in God. The paradox is also apparent when the psalms are recontextualized within Jewish and Christian faiths, where there is a deeper understanding of the role of persecution, perplexity, and suffering within the mysterious purposes of God—purposes that are focused for the Christian in the person of Jesus at Gethsemane, Calvary, and the Easter tomb.
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R.W.L. Moberly (Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture)
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The current dogma of the "wall of separation" between Church and state is thus a far cry from our founding fathers' intent. It is, in fact, a denial of the multiplicity of institutions and jurisdictions. It cripples the Church and exalts the state. It denies the universal sovereignty of God over all institutions and asserts the absolute authority of the state. It excludes believers from their God-ordained ministry of social, cultural, and political involvement.
This "wall of separation" idea was slow to catch on in our nation. Until the War Between the States erupted, Christianity was universally encouraged at every level and by every level of the civil government. Then in 1861, under the influence ofthe radical Unitarians, the Northern Union ruled in the courts that the civil sphere should remain "indifferent" to the Church. After the war, that judgment was imposed on the Southern Confederation. One hundred years later in 1961, the erosion ofthe American system of Biblical checks and balances continued with the judicial declaration that all religious faiths were to be ''leveled" by the state. By 1963 the courts were protecting and favoring a new religion — "humanism" had been declared a religion by the Supreme Court in 1940 — while persecuting and limiting Christianity. The government in Washington began to make laws "respecting an establishment of religion" and "prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It banned posting the Ten Commandments in school rooms, allowed the Bible to be read in tax supported institutions only as an historical document, forbade prayer in the public domain, censored seasonal displays at Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving, regulated Church schools and outreach missions, demanded IRS registration, and denied equal access to the media. It has stripped the Church of its jurisdiction and dismantled the institutional differentiation the founding fathers were so careful to construct.
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George Grant (The Changing of the Guard: Biblical Principles for Political Action (Biblical Blueprints Series. V. 8))