Faith And Persecution Quotes

Don’t ever give up in freedom what we would never have given up in persecution! That is our witness to the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ!

There was a time when skepticism was an act of rebellion. Since to a degree I both believe in evolution and have faith, I can only conclude that, as prophesied, to have faith will someday be an act of rebellion.

Stand up and wash away this shame from the face of Christ! They are spitting in His face.

Through the repeated hammer blows of defeat, destruction, and deportation, interpreted by the faithful prophets, Israel has to learn that election is not for comfort and security but for suffering and humiliation.

I was captivated by the thought: what if persecution is the normal, expected situation for a believer? And what if persecution is, in fact, soil in which faith can grow?

A state which which includes within itself a terrorized Church has lost its most faithful servant.

The reason for persecution, then, is that people keep finding Jesus—and, then, they refuse to keep Him to themselves.

Look on the effect of your religions, those movements that have swept up millions with their fantastical claims. Look at what they have done to human history. Look at the wars fought on account of them; look at the persecutions, the massacres. Look at the pure enslavement of reason; look at the price of faith and zeal.

No circumstance in the world can ever prevent us from believing in God, from placing all our trust in him, from loving him with our whole heart, or from loving our neighbor. Faith, hope, and charity are absolutely free, because if they are rooted in us deeply enough, they are able to draw strength from whatever opposes them! If someone sought to prevent us from believing by persecuting us, we always would retain the option of forgiving our enemies and transforming the situation of oppression into one of greater love. If someone tried to silence our faith by killing us, our deaths would be the best possible proclamation of our faith! Love, and only love, can overcome evil by good and draw good out of evil.

The more you cry today, the more stronger and happier you'll be tomorrow.

States that are built on a religious foundation limit their own people in a circle of faith and fear.

Every exceptional bias against Christianity I find to be evidence for its validity.

Suffering is one of God’s ordained means for the growth of his church. He brought salvation to the world through Christ, our suffering Savior, and he now spreads salvation in the world through Christians as suffering saints. In the words of Paul, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). Clearly, there is a sense in which the danger of our lives increases in proportion to the depth of our relationship with Christ.

Above all is the centrality of love at the heart of vulnerable faith. Vulnerability will thrive only where love abounds—a love that is generous, gracious, patient, compassionate, humble, curious, joyful, and full of hope. In the absence of fear and the bondage it inflicts on us, love will put down roots, grow, and extend its reach far beyond our expectations or natural capacity. Love we once reserved only for those closest to us can be offered even to those who would persecute us. Enemies are transformed into sisters and brothers and friends.

Once again, the point of this discussion is not to accuse Christians of endorsing torture and persecution. Of course most devout Christians today are thoroughly tolerant and humane people. Even those who thunder from televised pulpits do not call for burning heretics alive or hoisting Jews on the strappado. The question is why they don’t, given that their beliefs imply that it would serve the greater good. The answer is that people in the West today compartmentalize their religious ideology. When they affirm their faith in houses of worship, they profess beliefs that have barely changed in two thousand years. But when it comes to their actions, they respect modern norms of nonviolence and toleration, a benevolent hypocrisy for which we should all be grateful.

we can grasp the full meaning of the Resurrection, we first have to witness or experience crucifixion. If we spend our lives so afraid of suffering, so averse to sacrifice, that we avoid even the risk of persecution or crucifixion, then we might never discover the true wonder, joy and power of a resurrection faith. Ironically, avoiding suffering could be the very thing that prevents us from partnering deeply with the Risen Jesus.

Without self-knowledge you have no root in yourselves personally; you may endure for a time, but under affliction or persecution your faith will not last. This is why many in this age (and in every age) become infidels, heretics, schismatics, disloyal despisers of the Church. They cast off the form of truth, because it never has been to them more than a form. They endure not, because they never have tasted that the Lord is gracious; and they never have had experience of His power and love, because they have never known their own weakness and need.

If your Lord calls you to suffering, do not be dismayed, for He will provide a deeper portion of Christ in your suffering. The softest pillow will be placed under your head though you must set your bare feet among thorns. Do not be afraid at suffering for Christ, for He has a sweet peace for a sufferer. God has called you to Christ's side, and if the wind is now in His face, you cannot expect to rest on the sheltered side of the hill. You cannot be above your Master who received many an innocent stroke. The greatest temptation out of hell is to live without trials. A pool of standing water will turn stagnant. Faith grows more with the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace withers without adversity. You cannot sneak quietly into heaven without a cross. Crosses form us into His image. They cut away the pieces of our corruption. Lord cut, carve, wound; Lord do anything to perfect Your image in us and make us fit for glory! We need winnowing before we enter the kingdom of God. O what I owe to the file, hammer, and furnace! Why should I be surprised at the plough that makes such deep furrows in my soul? Whatever direction the wind blows, it will blow us to the Lord. His hand will direct us safely to the heavenly shore to find the weight of eternal glory. As we look back to our pains and suffering, we shall see that suffering is not worthy to be compared to our first night's welcome home in heaven. If we could smell of heaven and our country above, our crosses would not bite us. Lay all your loads by faith on Christ, ease yourself, and let Him bear all. He can, He does, and He will bear you. Whether God comes with a rod or a crown, He comes with Himself. "Have courage, I am your salvation!" Welcome, welcome Jesus!

During Aurangzeb’s rule, which lasted for forty-nine years from 1658 onwards, there were many phases during which Pandits were persecuted. One of his fourteen governors, Iftikhar Khan, who ruled for four years from 1671, was particularly brutal towards the community. It was during his rule that a group of Pandits approached the ninth Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur, in Punjab and begged him to save their faith. He told them to return to Kashmir and tell the Mughal rulers that if they could convert him (Tegh Bahadur), all Kashmiri Pandits would accept Islam. This later led to the Guru’s martyrdom, but the Pandits were saved.

What Christians see, or claim to see, in Genesis 1-3 changed as the church itself changed from a dissident Jewish sect to a popular movement persecuted by the Roman government, and changed further as this movement increasingly gained members throughout Roman society, until finally even the Roman emperor himself converted to the new faith and Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire.

...our pilgrimage among house churches in persecution convinced us that God may actually want to use them to save us from the often debilitating, and sometimes spiritually-fatal, effects of our watered down, powerless western faith.

So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am at home, I will only enter a synagogue for the bar or bat mitzvah of a friend's child, or in order to have a debate with the faithful. (When I was to be wed, I chose a rabbi named Robert Goldburg, an Einsteinian and a Shakespearean and a Spinozist, who had married Arthur Miller to Marilyn Monroe and had a copy of Marilyn’s conversion certificate. He conducted the ceremony in Victor and Annie Navasky's front room, with David Rieff and Steve Wasserman as my best of men.) I wanted to do something to acknowledge, and to knit up, the broken continuity between me and my German-Polish forebears. When I am traveling, I will stop at the shul if it is in a country where Jews are under threat, or dying out, or were once persecuted. This has taken me down queer and sad little side streets in Morocco and Tunisia and Eritrea and India, and in Damascus and Budapest and Prague and Istanbul, more than once to temples that have recently been desecrated by the new breed of racist Islamic gangster. (I have also had quite serious discussions, with Iraqi Kurdish friends, about the possibility of Jews genuinely returning in friendship to the places in northern Iraq from which they were once expelled.) I hate the idea that the dispossession of one people should be held hostage to the victimhood of another, as it is in the Middle East and as it was in Eastern Europe. But I find myself somehow assuming that Jewishness and 'normality' are in some profound way noncompatible. The most gracious thing said to me when I discovered my family secret was by Martin, who after a long evening of ironic reflection said quite simply: 'Hitch, I find that I am a little envious of you.' I choose to think that this proved, once again, his appreciation for the nuances of risk, uncertainty, ambivalence, and ambiguity. These happen to be the very things that 'security' and 'normality,' rather like the fantasy of salvation, cannot purchase.

I was only giving expression to a sad reflection that was rising in my mind. Kichijiro was right in saying that all men are not saints and heroes. How many of our Christians, if only they had been born in another age from this persecution would never have been confronted with the problem of apostasy or martyrdom but would have lived blessed lives of faith until the very hour of death.

When I left England, my hope of India's conversion was very strong; but amongst so many obstacles, it would die, unless upheld by God. Well, I have God, and His Word is true. Though the superstitions of the heathen were a thousand times stronger than they are, and the example of the Europeans a thousand times worse; though I were deserted by all and persecuted by all, yet my faith, fixed on the sure Word, would rise above all obstructions and overcome every trial. God's cause will triumph. (William Carey, quoted in Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope, Banner of Truth 1971, p 140.)

True evangelical faith is of such a nature it cannot lie dormant, but spreads itself out in all kinds of righteousness and fruits of love;
it dies to flesh and blood;
it destroys all lusts and forbidden desires;
it seeks, serves and fears God in its inmost soul (3);
it clothes the naked;
it feeds the hungry;
it comforts the sorrowful; 
it shelters the destitute;
it aids and consoles the sad;
it does good to those who do it harm;
it serves those that harm it;
it prays for those who persecute it;
it teaches, admonishes and judges us with the Word of the Lord;
it seeks those who are lost;
it binds up what is wounded;
it heals the sick;
it saves what is strong (sound);
it becomes all things to all people.
The persecution, suffering and anguish that come to it for the sake of the Lord’s truth have become a glorious joy and comfort to it.

For us, persecution is like the sun coming up in the east. It happens all the time. It's the way things are. There is nothing unusual or unexpected about it. Persecution for our faith has always been - and probably always will be - a normal part of life. (Spoken by a Russian pastor)

persecution is like the sun coming up in the east. It happens all the time. It’s the way things are. There is nothing unusual or unexpected about it. Persecution for our faith has always been—and probably always will be—a normal part of life.

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

The real key to accepting and enduring a particular trial or persecution, or to persevering victoriously through a certain period of suffering, is discipleship.

Either we of the faith shall become a small persecuted, neglected island amid mankind, or we shall be able to life up at the end of the struggle the old battle cry, “Christus Imperat!

We don’t have to ask what the will of God is; he has made it clear. He wants his people to provide for the poor, to value the unborn, to care for orphans and widows, to rescue people from slavery, to defend marriage, to war against sexual immorality in all its forms in every area of our lives, to love our neighbors as ourselves regardless of their ethnicity, to practice faith regardless of the risk, and to proclaim the gospel to all nations. Of these things we are sure.

I'd like to start this week with a request, and this one goes out to the followers of the three Abrahamic religions: the Muslims, Christians, and Jews. It's just a little thing, really, but do you think that when you've finished smashing up the world and blowing each other to bits and demanding special privileges while you do it, do you think that maybe the rest of us could sort of have our planet back? I wouldn't ask, but I'm starting to think that there must be something written in the special books that each of you so enjoy referring to that it's ok to behave like special, petulant, pugnacious, pricks. Forgive the alliteration, but your persistent, power-mad punch-ups are pissing me off. It's mainly the extremists obviously, but not exclusively. It's a lot of 'main-streamers' as well. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. Muslims: listen up my bearded and veily friends! Calm down, ok? Stop blowing stuff up. Not everything that said about you is an attack on the prophet Mohammed and Allah that needs to end in the infidel being destroyed. Have a cup of tea, put on a Cat Stevens record, sit down and chill out. I mean seriously, what's wrong with a strongly-worded letter to The Times? Christians: you and your churches don't get to be millionaires while other people have nothing at all. They're your bloody rules; either stick to them or abandon the faith. And stop persecuting and killing people you judge to be immoral. Oh, and stop pretending you're celibate -- it's a cover-up for being a gay or a nonce. Right, that's two ticked off. Jews! I know you're god's 'Chosen People' and the rest of us are just whatever, but when Israel behaves like a violent, psychopathic bully and someone mentions it that doesn't make them antisemitic. And for the record, your troubled history is not a license to act with impunity now.

take great pleasure and joy in the outcome of a time of suffering, trial, or persecution, realizing that we are enhancing our heavenly reward and understanding more about the power of suffering (Rev. 2:10).

How like God's love yours has been to me- so wise, so generous, and so unsparing!" exclaimed Pancratius. "Promise me one thing more- that is, that you will stay near to me to the end, and carry my last legacy to my mother.

The most powerful anti-Christian movement is the one that takes over and "radicalizes" the concern for victims in order to paganize it. The powers and principalities want to be “revolutionary” now, and they reproach Christianity for not defending victims with enough ardor. In Christian history they see nothing but persecutions, acts of oppression, inquisitions. This other totalitarianism presents itself as the liberator of humanity. In trying to usurp the place of Christ, the powers imitate him in the way a mimetic rival imitates his model in order to defeat him. They denounce the Christian concern for victims as hypocritical and a pale imitation of the authentic crusade against oppression and persecution for which they would carry the banner themselves. In the symbolic language of the New Testament, we would say that in our world Satan, trying to make a new start and gain new triumphs, borrows the language of victims. ... The Antichrist boasts of bringing to human beings the peace and tolerance that Christianity promised but has failed to deliver. Actually, what the radicalization of contemporary victimology produces is a return to all sorts of pagan practices: abortion, euthanasia, sexual undifferentiation, Roman circus games galore but without real victims, etc. Neo-paganism would like to turn the Ten Commandments and all of Judeo-Christian morality into some alleged intolerable violence, and indeed its primary objective is their complete abolition. Faithful observance of the moral law is perceived as complicity with the forces of persecution that are essentially religious... Neo-paganism locates happiness in the unlimited satisfaction of desires, which means the suppression of all prohibitions. This idea acquires a semblance of credibility in the limited domain of consumer goods, whose prodigious multiplication, thanks to technological progress, weakens certain mimetic rivalries. The weakening of mimetic rivalries confers an appearance of plausibility, but only that, on the stance that turns the moral law into an instrument of repression and persecution.

Jesus is very much alive and well in the twenty-first century. Jesus is revealed in the lives and words and resurrection faith of the believers in persecution. These believers don't just live for Jesus, they live with Jesus every day.

Even though Christ Himself would not deliver us from the power of the Totalitarian State, as He did not deliver Himself, we must see His purpose in it all. Maybe his children are being persecuted by the world in order that they might withdraw themselves from the world. Maybe His most violent enemies may be doing His work negatively, for it could be the mission of totalitarianism to preside over the liquidation of a modern world that became indifferent to God and His moral laws.

Constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn't pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else's success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God's favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father's home and choose to dwell in a "distant country," (pp. 41 & 42).

For us, persecution is like the sun coming up in the east. It happens all the time. It’s the way things are. There is nothing unusual or unexpected about it. Persecution for our faith has always been—and probably always will be—a normal part of life.

Long before Emma Lazarus welcomed the tired and poor, Washington declared that the 'bosom of America [was] open to receive, the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions, whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.

Well, there is nothing we can do about it. We have to put up with these snakes, dogs, and swine surrounding us and corrupting the Gospel both in doctrine and in life. Wherever there are faithful preachers they always have to take this. Such is the fortune of the Gospel in the world.

People are merely "amusing themselves" by asking for the patience which a famine or a persecution would call for if, in the meantime, the weather and every other inconvenience sets them grumbling. One must learn to walk before one can run. So here. We - or at least I - shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, no have "tasted and seen." Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are "patches of Godlight" in the woods of our experience.

Online discussion boards and Facebook groups, where covert communities of queers, feminists, and Christians of color gather and find solace—to Matt these replicate the early church in the New Testament, where gatherings were organic and happened in homes or in secret, for fear of persecution.

Thousands of Christians compromise their faith in Jesus Christ by denying Him. Even some clergymen neglect or deliberately refuse to close a public prayer in the name of Jesus for fear of offending an unbeliever. They cannot endure the persecution that may follow an acknowledgment of Jesus Christ.

Jesus never expected us simply to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, bless those who persecute us, give unto them that ask, and so forth. These responses, generally and rightly understood to be characteristic of Christlikeness, were put forth by him as illustrative of what might be expected of a new kind of person – one who intelligently and steadfastly seeks, above all else, to live within the rule of God and be possessed by the kind of righteousness that God himself has, as Matthew 6:33 portrays. Instead, Jesus did invite people to follow him into that sort of life from which behavior such as loving one’s enemies will seem like the only sensible and happy thing to do. For a person living that life, the hard thing to do would be to hate the enemy, to turn the supplicant away, or to curse the curser… True Christlikeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.

For what harm can come to you even if the world is most hostile to you, persecutes and torments you? You still know that you have Christ the Lord as your Friend, and not only Him but also the Father, who assures you and testifies through the mouth of His Son that He loves and cherishes you because of your faith in Christ, and your confession of Him. Now, since you have this Lord on your side, together with all the angels and saints, why should you worry about or fear the world's ire?

For a while I thought I could un-Jew myself. Then I realized that being Jewish is not in the ritual or the action. It is in one's history. I am proud of being Jewish, because I think that's where my indomitable spirit comes from, passed down from ancestors who burned in fired of persecution because of their blood, their faith.

The radical Christian Right calls for exclusion, cruelty and intolerance in the name of God. Its members do not commit evil for evil’s sake. They commit evil to make a better world. To attain this better world, they believe, some must suffer and be silenced, and at the end of time all those who oppose them must be destroyed. The worst suffering in human history has been carried out by those who preach such grand, utopian visions, those who seek to implant by force their narrow, particular version of goodness. This is true for all doctrines of personal salvation, from Christianity to ethnic nationalism to communism to fascism. Dreams of a universal good create hells of persecution, suffering and slaughter. No human being could ever be virtuous enough to attain such dreams, and the Earth has swallowed millions of hapless victims in the vain pursuit of a new heaven and a new Earth. Ironically, it is idealism that leads radical fundamentalists to strip human beings of their dignity and their sanctity and turn them into abstractions. Yet it is only by holding on to the sanctity of each individual, each human life, only by placing our faith in tiny, unheroic acts of compassion and kindness, that we survive as a community and as individual human beings. These small acts of kindness are deeply feared and subversive to these idealists.

When our lives are congruent with the Lord’s will, we are empowered spiritually. Remember what Joseph Smith was taught in Liberty Jail? If we let ‘virtue garnish [our] thoughts unceasingly; then shall [our] confidence wax strong in the presence of God’ (D&C 121:45). That is what we want as we seek to strengthen our faith. We want our confidence to be strong in God’s presence. We don’t want to shrink away because we are filled with shame. We want the kind of faith that caused Amanda Barnes Smith to immediately ask God for help in a time of extreme need. She did so in full confidence that He would answer because by then she had been hated and persecuted for His name’s sake. And so she knew her life was pleasing to her Heavenly Father! I believe this is what Paul meant when he said, ‘let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need’ (Hebrews 4:16). That kind of confidence, that kind of boldness comes from having actual knowledge we are living as God would have us live, doing what God would have us do. Here is another reason why these tender mercies and divine signatures are so important to us. They not only teach us about God’s nature, which strengthens our faith, but they are also a confirming witness that god is pleased with us—sometimes even delighted with us.

There are many people who in the name of faith or love persecute countless people around them. If I believe that my notion about God, about happiness, about nirvana is perfect, I want very much to impose that notion on you. I will say that if you don’t believe as I do, you will not be happy. I will do everything I can to impose my notions on you, and therefore I will destroy you. I will make you unhappy for the whole of your life. We will destroy each other in the name of faith, in the name of love, just because of the fact that the objects of our faith and of our love are not true insight, are not direct experience of suffering and of happiness; they are just notions and ideas.

But listening to actual atheists taught me that most atheists simply want to be free to believe as they wish, without persecution from the faithful.

Only he who cries out for the persecuted Jews can sing Gregorian chants. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In the coming soft totalitarianism, Christians will have to regard family life in a much more focused, serious way. The traditional Christian family is not merely a good idea—it is also a survival strategy for the faith in a time of persecution. Christians should stop taking family life for granted, instead approaching it in a more thoughtful, disciplined way. We cannot simply live as all other families live, except that we go to church on Sunday. Holding the correct theological beliefs and having the right intentions will not be enough. Christian parents must be intentionally countercultural in their approach to family dynamics. The days of living like everybody else and hoping our children turn out for the best are over.

Islamo-Fascism is NOT the result of economic deprivation or legitimate blowback because of Western foreign policies or even heinous drone attacks on Muslim civilians. All non-Muslims as Infidels, regardless of their faith or lack of it, are in an ideological war with a demonized, freedom-hating Muslim death-cult rooted in their accurate interpretation of the Qur'an!

I wonder what could happen if self-confessed followers of Jesus surrendered our human powers, and our desires for power, and began to celebrate openly our human weakness in exchange for the experience of Christ as Power within us. What could happen if, for Christ's sake, we openly delighted in our weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties?

You can’t use strong-arm tactics against the Church without strengthening it. It’s always been that way. Under persecution a man looks at his faith to see if it’s worth fighting for, and this is a scrutiny Christianity can always withstand. The real danger comes with an indirect attack, where a person is lured away from the Church before he has a chance to become strong.

I had always assumed that persecution was abnormal, exceptional, unusual, out of the ordinary. In my mind, persecution was something to avoid. It was a problem, a setback, a barrier. I was captivated by the thought: what if persecution is the normal, expected situation for a believer? And what if the persecution is, in fact, soil in which faith can grow? What if persecution can be, in fact, good soil? I began to wonder about what that might mean for the church in America—and I began to wonder about what that might mean for the potential church in Somalia.

Then Stephen must tell her the cruel truth, she must say: ‘I am one of those whom God marked on the forehead. Like Cain, I am marked and blemished. If you come to me, Mary, the world will abhor you, will persecute you, will call you unclean. Our love may be faithful even unto death and beyond — yet the world will call it unclean. We may harm no living creature by our love; we may grow more perfect in understanding and in charity because of our loving; but all this will not save you from the scourge of a world that will turn away its eyes from your noblest actions, finding only corruption and vileness in you. You will see men and women defiling each other, laying the burden of their sins upon their children. You will see unfaithfulness, lies and deceit among those whom the world views with approbation. You will find that many have grown hard of heart, have grown greedy, selfish, cruel and lustful; and then you will turn to me and will say: “You and I are more worthy of respect than these people. Why does the world persecute us, Stephen?” And I shall answer: “Because in this world there is only toleration for the so-called normal.” And when you come to me for protection, I shall say: “I cannot protect you, Mary, the world has deprived me of my right to protect; I am utterly helpless, I can only love you”.

The Reformation which took place in the sixteenth century, while it aimed to remove many of the abuses of Popery, still did not recognize religions liberty. "There is not a confession of faith, nor a creed," says Underhill, "framed by any of the Reformers, which does not give to the magistrate a coercive power in religion, and almost every one, at the same time, curses the resisting Baptist." "It was the crime of this persecuted people, that they rejected secular interference in the church of God; it was the boast and aim of the Reformers everywhere to employ it. The natural fruit of the one was persecution – of the other, liberty."[1] The Baptists stood entirely alone, as the defenders of the rights of conscience. All the Reformed communities agreed that it was right for the magistrate to punish those who did not worship according to the prescribed rule of their churches; and it was for opposition to this feature of religious oppression, in connection with their adherence to believer's baptiem, that brought upon the Baptists those severe persecutions which they were called to endure. They contended for religious liberty; the Reformed churches opposed it, and committed themselves to a course fatal to the rights of conscience.

Getting honest with ourselves does not make us unacceptable to God. It does not distance us from God, but draws us to Him—as nothing else can—and opens us anew to the flow of grace. While Jesus calls each of us to a more perfect life, we cannot achieve it on our own. To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace. It is only through grace that any of us could dare to hope that we could become more like Christ. The saved sinner with the tilted halo has been converted from mistrust to trust, has arrived at an inner poverty of spirit, and lives as best he or she can in rigorous honesty with self, others, and God. The question the gospel of grace puts to us is simply this: Who shall separate you from the love of Christ? What are you afraid of? Are you afraid that your weakness could separate you from the love of Christ? It can’t. Are you afraid that your inadequacies could separate you from the love of Christ? They can’t. Are you afraid that your inner poverty could separate you from the love of Christ? It can’t. Difficult marriage, loneliness, anxiety over the children’s future? They can’t. Negative self-image? It can’t. Economic hardship, racial hatred, street crime? They can’t. Rejection by loved ones or the suffering of loved ones? They can’t. Persecution by authorities, going to jail? They can’t. Nuclear war? It can’t. Mistakes, fears, uncertainties? They can’t. The gospel of grace calls out, Nothing can ever separate you from the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord. You must be convinced of this, trust it, and never forget to remember. Everything else will pass away, but the love of Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Faith will become vision, hope will become possession, but the love of Jesus Christ that is stronger than death endures forever. In the end, it is the one thing you can hang onto.

before we can grasp the full meaning of the Resurrection, we first have to witness or experience crucifixion. If we spend our lives so afraid of suffering, so averse to sacrifice, that we avoid even the risk of persecution or crucifixion, then we might never discover the true wonder, joy and power of a resurrection faith. Ironically, avoiding suffering could be the very thing that prevents us from partnering deeply with the Risen Jesus.

So-called gnosis’ was an enormous temptation in the early Christian Church. By contrast, persecution, even the bloodiest, posed far less of a threat to the Church’s continuing purity and further development. Gnosticism had its roots in late antiquity, drew on oriental and Jewish sources, and multiplied into innumerable esoteric doctrines and sects. Then, like a vampire, the parasite took hold of the youthful bloom and vigour of Christianity. What made it so insidious was the fact that the Gnostics very often did not want to leave the Church. Instead, they claimed to be offering a superior and more authentic exposition of Holy Scripture, though, of course, this was only for the ‘superior souls’ (‘the spiritual’, ‘the pneumatic’); the common folk (‘the psychic’) were left to get on with their crude practices. It is not hard to see how this kind of compartmentalizing of the Church’s members, indeed of mankind as a whole, inevitably encouraged not only an excited craving for higher initiation, but also an almost unbounded arrogance in those who had moved from mere ‘faith’ to real, enlightened ‘knowledge’.

Living and dying, sorrow and joy, the blisters on my feet and the jasmine behind the house, the persecution, the unspeakable horrors: it is all as one in me, and I accept it all as one mighty whole and begin to grasp it better if only for myself, without being able to explain to anyone else how it all hangs together. I wish I could live for a long time so that one day I may know how to explain it, and if I am not granted that wish, well, then somebody else will perhaps do it, carry on from where my life has been cut short. And that is why I must try to live a good and faithful life to my last breath: so that those who come after me do not have to start all over again, need not face the same difficulties. Isn't that doing something for future generations?

I want men who will believe in Me, even when I do not protect them; I will not open the prison doors where My brethren are locked; I will not stay the murderous Red sickle or the imperial lions of Rome, I will not halt the Red hammer that batters down My tabernacle doors; I want My missionaries and martyrs to love Me in prison and death as I loved them in My own suffering. I never worked any miracles to save Myself! I will work few miracles even for My saints. Begone, Satan! Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God.

Atomism was viciously persecuted as heresy throughout the early Christian era, and only one printed manuscript of De Rerum Naturum survived the flames. There are several translations; I have chosen the one translated by my fellow Devonian and Oxonian, W. Hannaford Brown. Brown’s own manuscript was almost destroyed during the Nazi bombardment of England in 1943: if a religious book had survived so many vicissitudes we can easily imagine what the faithful would say. But Lucretius teaches us to live without such piffle.

I worry the Christian community has accepted an insidious shift from laboring for others to prioritizing our own rights. We’ve perpetuated a group identity as misunderstood and persecuted, defending our positions and preferring to be right over being good news. We’ve bought the lie that connecting with people on their terms is somehow compromising, that our refusal to proclaim our moral ground from word one is a slippery slope. It has become more vital to protect our own station than advocate for a world that needs Jesus, who came to us, wrapped in our skin, speaking our language. If we were not too beneath Christ, who died for us while we were still sinners, then how dare we take a superior position over any other human being? How lovely is a faith community that goes forth as loving sisters and brothers rather than angry defenders and separatists.

India is the only country where there never has been a religious persecution, where never was any man disturbed for his religious faith. Theists or atheists, monists, dualists, monotheists are there and always live unmolested. Materialists were allowed to preach from the steps of Brahminical temples, against the gods, and against God Himself; they went preaching all over the land that the idea of God was a mere superstition, and that gods, and Vedas, and religion were simply superstitions invented by the priests for their own benefit, and they were allowed to do this unmolested.

Watchman, what of the night? So many victims in so many places need help. We need, above all, to be shaken out of our indifference—the greatest source of danger in the world. For, remember: the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. The opposite of faith is not arrogance by indifference; the opposite of culture is not ignorance but indifference; the opposite of art is not ugliness but indifference. And the opposite of peace is indifference to both peace and war—indifference to hunger and persecution, to imprisonment and humiliation, indifference to torture and persecution.

Anger, resentment, jealousy, desire for revenge, lust, greed, antagonisms, and rivalries are the obvious signs that I have left home. And that happens quite easily. When I pay careful attention to what goes on in my mind from moment to moment, I come to the disconcerting discovery that there are very few moments during the day when I am really free from these dark emotions, passions and feelings. Constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn't pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else's success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God's favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed, that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father's home and choose to dwell in a "distant country.

On Turgenev: He knew from Lavrov that I was an enthusiastic admirer of his writings; and one day, as we were returning in a carriage from a visit to Antokolsky's studio, he asked me what I thought of Bazarov. I frankly replied, 'Bazaraov is an admirable painting of the nihilist, but one feels that you did not love him as mush as you did your other heroes.' 'On the contrary, I loved him, intensely loved him,' Turgenev replied, with an unexpected vigor. 'When we get home I will show you my diary, in which I have noted how I wept when I had ended the novel with Bazarov's death.' Turgenev certainly loved the intellectual aspect of Bazarov. He so identified himself with the nihilist philosophy of his hero that he even kept a diary in his name, appreciating the current events from Bazarov's point of view. But I think that he admired him more than he loved him. In a brilliant lecture on Hamlet and Don Quixote, he divided the history makers of mankind into two classes, represented by one or the other of these characters. 'Analysis first of all, and then egotism, and therefore no faith,--an egotist cannot even believe in himself:' so he characterized Hamlet. 'Therefore he is a skeptic, and never will achieve anything; while Don Quixote, who fights against windmills, and takes a barber's plate for the magic helmet of Mambrino (who of us has never made the same mistake?), is a leader of the masses, because the masses always follow those who, taking no heed of the sarcasms of the majority, or even of persecutions, march straight forward, keeping their eyes fixed upon a goal which is seen, perhaps, by no one but themselves. They search, they fall, but they rise again and find it,--and by right, too. Yet, although Hamlet is a skeptic, and disbelieves in Good, he does not disbelieve in Evil. He hates it; Evil and Deceit are his enemies; and his skepticism is not indifferentism, but only negation and doubt, which finally consume his will.' These thought of Turgenev give, I think, the true key for understanding his relations to his heroes. He himself and several of his best friends belonged more or less to the Hamlets. He loved Hamlet, and admired Don Quixote. So he admired also Bazarov. He represented his superiority admirably well, he understood the tragic character of his isolated position, but he could not surround him with that tender, poetical love which he bestowed as on a sick friend, when his heroes approached the Hamlet type. It would have been out of place.

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.

. 'In religion itself there is nothing mysterious to its author,' Madison wrote in 1792. 'The mystery lies in the dimness of the human sight.' If it is ultimately impossible for mortals to know God's mind, the history of persecution becomes cosmically tragic - two thousand years of dogmatic men burning one another over religious ideas whose veracity only God can know.

The claim at the heart of this book has been carefully researched by several generations of scholars and is orthodox in academic circles, if not beyond. Christians under the Roman Empire were neither constantly persecuted nor martyred in huge numbers for their faith. They were prosecuted from time to time for alleged sedition, holding illegal meetings or refusing to sacrifice to the emperor. They were, like other convicts, sometimes tortured and executed in horrible ways. They seem to have been regarded by many Romans with distaste as a particularly silly superstition. But Christian stories of thousands of individual and mass martyrdoms over centuries have at best a limited basis in historical fact, and in many cases are sheer fiction.

The worship of the “Great Mystery” was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity. Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselyting, nor persecution, neither were there any scoffers or atheists.

All I ever wanted was to be persecuted for righteousness’s sake, to be a martyr for Jesus, to stoically endure doors slammed in my face, to persevere until the end. But all I really ever wanted was to love on my terms, in a way that elevated me above my neighbor, distinguished me as good and holy, receiving accolades in a most humble way. All I ever wanted to do was oppress people, in the kindest way possible.

While we often recognize the need to learn how to face hunger and need, we aren't always aware that we need similar help to face wealth and abundance. It's not easy to face affluence every day without committing idolatry or succumbing to ingratitude. In fact, church history is filled with stories of sincere believers facing lowness, hunger, need, suffering, persecution, hardship, and death with Christ-honoring joy and faithfulness. But the stories of Christian fidelity in the midst of overwhelming abundance, provision, plenty, and wealth are fewer and farther between. This is why Jesus says that it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 19:23). One of the chief challenges for Christians in the West is to learn to face our unprecedented abundance with the strength supplied by Christ and not by the wealth.

Stoyan, and thanked him for his time, he smiled modestly and replied, “I thank God and I take great joy in knowing that I was suffering in prison in my country, so that you, Nik, could be free to share Jesus in Kentucky.” Those words pierced my soul. I looked Stoyan straight in the eyes. “Oh, no!” I protested. “No! You are not going to do that! You are NOT going to put that on me. That is a debt so large that I can never repay you!” Stoyan stared right back at me and said, “Son, that’s the debt of the cross!” He leaned forward and poked me in the chest with his finger as he continued, “Don’t you steal my joy! I took great joy that I was suffering in my country, so that you could be free to witness in your country.” Then he raised his voice in a prophet-like challenge that I knew would live with me forever: “Don’t ever give up in freedom what we would never have given up in persecution! That is our witness to the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ!

It is simply anachronistic to divide ancient motivations into the religious and the political. They were tangled up together. For us, the state is—in theory—exclusively political and should not interfere in questions of personal belief, religion, faith, or God. In reality religion and politics are thoroughly entangled with one another, but we idealize the separation of church and state and the freedom of individuals to practice their religious traditions. For ancient Romans the state

The human species is an animal species without very much variation within it, and it is idle and futile to imagine that a voyage to Tibet, say, will discover an entirely different harmony with nature or eternity. The Dalai Lama, for example, is entirely and easily recognizable to a secularist. In exactly the same way as a medieval princeling, he makes the claim not just that Tibet should be independent of Chinese hegemony—a “perfectly good” demand, if I may render it into everyday English—but that he himself is a hereditary king appointed by heaven itself. How convenient! Dissenting sects within his faith are persecuted; his one-man rule in an Indian enclave is absolute; he makes absurd pronouncements about sex and diet and, when on his trips to Hollywood fund-raisers, anoints major donors like Steven Segal and Richard Gere as holy. (Indeed, even Mr. Gere was moved to whine a bit when Mr. Segal was invested as a tulku, or person of high enlightenment. It must be annoying to be outbid at such a spiritual auction.) I will admit that the current “Dalai” or supreme lama is a man of some charm and presence, as I will admit that the present queen of England is a person of more integrity than most of her predecessors, but this does not invalidate the critique of hereditary monarchy, and the first foreign visitors to Tibet were downright appalled at the feudal domination, and hideous punishments, that kept the population in permanent serfdom to a parasitic monastic elite.

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

A carpenter witnessed to me about Christ. He died knowing he had brought only my wife and me to faith, but we brought others to Christ. Those brought others, and so on. The result is Hebrew Christian churches in Haifa, Tel-Aviv, and Jerusalem. Their true founder is that carpenter. He witnessed to many people without result, but he brought one to Christ who brought others. Some of them became interested in helping persecuted Christians in communist countries. That is how The Voice of the Martyrs worldwide began.

...it takes great humility to find oneself unjustly condemned and be silent, and to do this is to imitate the Lord Who set us free from all our sins. ... The truly humble person will have a genuine desire to be thought little of, and persecuted, and condemned unjustly, even in serious matters. ... It is a great help to meditate upon the great gain which in any case this is bound to bring us, and to realize how, properly speaking, we can never be blamed unjustly, since we are always full of faults, and a just man falls seven times a day, so that it would be a falsehood for us to say we have no sin. If, then, we are not to blame for the thing that we are accused of, we are never wholly without blame in the way that our good Jesus was. ... Thou knowest, my Good, that if there is anything good in me it comes from no other hands than Thine own. For what is it to Thee, Lord, to give much instead of little? True, I do not deserve it, but neither have I deserved the favors which Thou hast shown me already. Can it be that I should wish a thing so evil as myself to be thought well of by anyone, when they have said such wicked things of Thee, Who art good above all other good? ... Do Thou give me light and make me truly to desire that all should hate me, since I have so often let Thee, Who hast loved me with such faithfulness. ... What does it matter to us if we are blamed by them all, provided we are without blame in the sight of the Lord? ...meditate upon what is real and upon what is not. ... Do you suppose, ... that, if you do not make excuses for yourself, there will not be someone else who will defend you? Remember how the Lord took the Magdalen's part in the Pharisee's house and also when her sister blamed her. He will not treat you as rigorously as He treated Himself: it was not until He was on the Cross that He had even a thief to defend Him. His Majesty, then, will put it into somebody's mind to defend you; if He does not, it will be because there is no need. ...be glad when you are blamed, and in due time you will see what profit you experience in your souls. For it is in this way that you will begin to gain freedom; soon you will not care if they speak ill or well of you; it will seem like someone else's business. ... So here: it becomes such a habit with us not to reply that it seems as if they are not addressing us at all. This may seem impossible to those of us who are very sensitive and not capable of great mortification. It is indeed difficult at first, but I know that, with the Lord's help, the gradual attainment of this freedom, and of renunciation and self-detachment, is quite possible.

Y. Collins has rightly perceived the radical stance of opposition taken by this writing: Given a situation of persecution a variety of responses are possible. One might decide to write an apology for the Christian faith rather than an apocalypse. The fact that the author chose to write an apocalypse and one which involves such a thorough-going attack on the authority of Rome is an indication that he shared the fundamental theological principle of the Zealots: that the kingdom of God is incompatible with the kingdom of Caesar.16

For those familiar with the early history of the Christian church—and for careful observers of young and vibrant Christian communities in the non-Western world—there is something odd about the present sense of crisis in the West. The early Christian communities were not major social players at all! They were not even among the cheering or booing spectators. Slandered, discriminated against, and even persecuted minorities, they were at most a bit of a thorn in society’s flesh. Yet, notwithstanding their marginality, early Christian communities celebrated hope in God and proclaimed joyfully the resurrected Lord as they endeavored to walk in the footsteps of the crucified Messiah. It was he who taught them, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil things against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt. 5:10–11)

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.

It seems obvious that throughout history, as one of the few professions open to women, midwifery must have attracted women of unusual intelligence, competence, and self-respect§. While acknowledging that many remedies used by the witches were “purely magical” and worked, if at all, by suggestion, Ehrenreich and English point out an important distinction between the witch-healer and the medical man of the late Middle Ages: . . . the witch was an empiricist; She relied on her senses rather than on faith or doctrine, she believed in trial and error, cause and effect. Her attitude was not religiously passive, but actively inquiring. She trusted her ability to find ways to deal with disease, pregnancy and childbirth—whether through medication or charms. In short, her magic was the science of her time. By contrast: There was nothing in late mediaeval medical training that conflicted with church doctrine, and little that we would recognize as “science”. Medical students . . . spent years studying Plato, Aristotle and Christian theology. . . . While a student, a doctor rarely saw any patients at all, and no experimentation of any kind was taught. . . . Confronted with a sick person, the university-trained physician had little to go on but superstition. . . . Such was the state of medical “science” at the time when witch-healers were persecuted for being practitioners of “magic”.15 Since asepsis and the transmission of disease through bacteria and unwashed hands was utterly unknown until the latter part of the nineteenth century, dirt was a presence in any medical situation—real dirt, not the misogynistic dirt associated by males with the female body. The midwife, who attended only women in labor, carried fewer disease bacteria with her than the physician.

The practice of “tolerance,” in the sense of allowing people to dissent, did not of course exist in any part of Christian Europe in the 1500s. It came into being only centuries later, when some states conceded legal rights to religious minorities. But frontier societies having contact with other cultures, as in the Mediterranean and in Eastern Europe, were in a special category. Spain, like them, was a plural (and therefore in some sense forbearing) society long before toleration became a philosophical issue. The same was true of Transylvania and Poland. “There is nothing new about diversity of religion in Poland,” a Polish Lutheran stated in 1592. “In addition to the Greek Christians among us, pagans and Jews have been known for a long time, and faiths other than Roman Catholic have existed for centuries.”46 It was therefore commonplace, within that plural context, to have toleration without a theory of toleration, because there were legal guarantees for each faith.47 The protection given to the aljamas by Christian lords was by nature contractual: in return for protection, the Muslims and Jews paid taxes. Because there was no unitary political authority in Spain, the nobles felt free to allow their Muslims to observe their own cultural customs long after the Spanish crown had officially abolished the legal existence of Islam (in 1500 in Castile, in 1526 in the crown of Aragon). The development can be seen as inherent in the nature of pre-modern political systems in Europe. Before the advent of the modern (“nation”) state, small autonomous cultural groups could exist without being subjected to persecution, thanks to the protection of local authorities. The coming of the centralizing state, in post-Reformation Europe, removed that protection and aggravated intolerance.

A dense pall of fear hung over the entire group. Previously they had sensed that persecution might come. They had tried to prepare for it. Now it was real—raw and terrifying. If their enemies could do this to a man like Stephen, who sought only to serve his community and anyone in need, every one of them was in danger. All of them! Little groups huddled in whispered conversation. Mothers stayed home from evening prayer to shelter children. Men moved furtively, casting glances to each side as they hastened through the streets. The whole community was wrapped in a shroud of tension and uneasiness.

I am one of those whom God marked on the forehead. Like Cain, I am marked and blemished. If you come to me, Mary, the world will abhor you, will persecute you, will call you unclean. Our love may be faithful even unto death and beyond — yet the world will call it unclean. We may harm no living creature by our love; we may grow more perfect in understanding and in charity because of our loving; but all this will not save you from the scourge of a world that will turn away its eyes from your noblest actions, finding only corruption and vileness in you. You will see men and women defiling each other, laying the burden of their sins upon their children. You will see unfaithfulness, lies and deceit among those whom the world views with approbation. You will find that many have grown hard of heart, have grown greedy, selfish, cruel and lustful; and then you will turn to me and will say: “You and I are more worthy of respect than these people. Why does the world persecute us, Stephen?” And I shall answer: “Because in this world there is only toleration for the so-called normal.” And when you come to me for protection, I shall say: “I cannot protect you, Mary, the world has deprived me of my right to protect; I am utterly helpless, I can only love you.

When the world is hostile and persecuting, when the world moves against him and ostracizes or alienates him, a true disciple is not afraid, because he has utterly and totally given himself over to the lordship of Christ, confident in His care no matter what, even against the hostility of the world. Another characteristic of discipleship is that a true disciple is loyal to his Lord. In verse 32 Jesus told us, “Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.” When the heat is on, when the pressure and the persecution are bearing down and the world is attacking, the true believer will openly confess Christ. He won’t bail out. He won’t deny his faith. He won’t recant. He’ll stand up and proclaim Christ, no matter what the circumstances. He’ll go to prison and even face execution before he will deny his Lord. Someone will say, “What about Peter? He was a real disciple, but he denied his Lord.” It’s true. He did. But it was before the Holy Spirit came to live in him. After that, he never again was disloyal. He died for being loyal to Christ: crucified upside down, as he requested, because he said he was not worthy to die like his Lord. Such loyalty marks the ones whom Christ will confess belong to Him.

Ruth and I often share the stories that we have heard and the things that we have learned to help the western church and many of its congregations grasp a new, and perhaps more biblical, perspective on suffering and persecution in our faith. We share often about how suffering and persecution relate to our faith. We desperately want our western brothers and sisters in Christ to realize that the greatest enemy of our faith today is not communism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Atheism, or even Islam. Our greatest enemy is lostness. Lostness is the terrible enemy that Jesus commissioned His followers to vanquish with the battle strategy that He spelled out for them in Matthew 28:18-20. He was addressing this same enemy when He plainly clarified His purpose in coming: 'I have come to seek and to save those who are lost.' Our hope is that believers around the world will get close enough to the heart of God that the first images that come to mind when we heard the word 'Muslim' are not Somali pirates or suicide bombers or violent jihadists or even terrorists. When we hear the word 'Muslim,' we need to see and think of each and every individual Muslim as a lost person who is loved by God. We need to see each Muslim as a person in need of God's grace and forgiveness. We need to see each Muslim as someone for whom Christ died.

Our problem is not simply a lack of concern. And our problem is not that we are unaware or disinterested. We know what is happening around the world. Certainly, in light of what we have encountered in this book, we know about sacrifices that are made for the faith. We know more about the health and whereabouts of other members of the body of Christ today than at any other time in history. It's not enough to feel grateful for the blessed circumstances in which we live. It's not enough to do a better job remembering and praying for the suffering believers around the world. It's not even enough to identify with the other parts of Christ's Body around the world. Ultimately, the problem is one of emphasis and focus. Instead of recognizing, thinking about, remembering, praying about, identifying with and focusing on the suffering of fellow believers around the world, we would do well to shift our focus. Quite simply, we would do well to ask ourselves whether or not we are being obedient to Jesus. He is asking us - He is expecting us - He is commanding us to share Him wherever we go. He is commanding us to do that wherever we are today. It is simply a matter of obedience. If He is our Lord, then we will obey Him. If we do not obey Him, then He is not our Lord. Perhaps the question should not be: 'Why are others persecuted?' Perhaps the better question is: 'Why are we not?

We equate blessing with a new job, a new house, a banner year for our company, a big bonus at work, a new baby, a clean medical report, or an acceptance into the college of our choice. In our Western mindset—conditioned by the affluence surrounding us—God’s blessings are pleasant and enjoyable. When the opposite happens—suffering, hardship, loss of job, loss of health, financial strain—“blessing” isn’t usually the first word off our lips. As we cope with trials, we wonder if we’re being punished by God. We question if we’ve somehow merited God’s judgment. And we fervently pray that the burdens will be removed. In God’s economy, blessings are radically different than our American perception. This is the second counterintuitive principle we learn from Scripture: persecution means you’re blessed, not cursed.

Seeing oneself as a prophetic minority does not mean retreat, and it certainly does not mean victim status. It also does not confer faithfulness. Marginalization can strip away from us the besetting sins of a majoritarian viewpoint, but it can bring others as well. We must remember our smallness but also our connectedness to a global, and indeed cosmic, reality. The kingdom of God is vast and tiny, universal and exclusive. Our story is that of a little flock and of an army, awesome with banners. Our legacy is a Christianity of persecution and proliferation, of catacombs and cathedrals. If we see ourselves as only a minority, we will be tempted to isolation. If we see ourselves only as a kingdom, we will be tempted toward triumphalism. We are, instead, a church. We are a minority with a message and a mission.

Our safety lies in repentance. Our strength comes of obedience to the commandments of God. My beloved brethren and sisters, I accept this opportunity in humility. I pray that I may be guided by the Spirit of the Lord in that which I say. I have just been handed a note that says that a U.S. missile attack is under way. I need not remind you that we live in perilous times. I desire to speak concerning these times and our circumstances as members of this Church. You are acutely aware of the events of September 11, less than a month ago. Out of that vicious and ugly attack we are plunged into a state of war. It is the first war of the 21st century. The last century has been described as the most war-torn in human history. Now we are off on another dangerous undertaking, the unfolding of which and the end thereof we do not know. For the first time since we became a nation, the United States has been seriously attacked on its mainland soil. But this was not an attack on the United States alone. It was an attack on men and nations of goodwill everywhere. It was well planned, boldly executed, and the results were disastrous. It is estimated that more than 5,000 innocent people died. Among these were many from other nations. It was cruel and cunning, an act of consummate evil. Recently, in company with a few national religious leaders, I was invited to the White House to meet with the president. In talking to us he was frank and straightforward. That same evening he spoke to the Congress and the nation in unmistakable language concerning the resolve of America and its friends to hunt down the terrorists who were responsible for the planning of this terrible thing and any who harbored such. Now we are at war. Great forces have been mobilized and will continue to be. Political alliances are being forged. We do not know how long this conflict will last. We do not know what it will cost in lives and treasure. We do not know the manner in which it will be carried out. It could impact the work of the Church in various ways. Our national economy has been made to suffer. It was already in trouble, and this has compounded the problem. Many are losing their employment. Among our own people, this could affect welfare needs and also the tithing of the Church. It could affect our missionary program. We are now a global organization. We have members in more than 150 nations. Administering this vast worldwide program could conceivably become more difficult. Those of us who are American citizens stand solidly with the president of our nation. The terrible forces of evil must be confronted and held accountable for their actions. This is not a matter of Christian against Muslim. I am pleased that food is being dropped to the hungry people of a targeted nation. We value our Muslim neighbors across the world and hope that those who live by the tenets of their faith will not suffer. I ask particularly that our own people do not become a party in any way to the persecution of the innocent. Rather, let us be friendly and helpful, protective and supportive. It is the terrorist organizations that must be ferreted out and brought down. We of this Church know something of such groups. The Book of Mormon speaks of the Gadianton robbers, a vicious, oath-bound, and secret organization bent on evil and destruction. In their day they did all in their power, by whatever means available, to bring down the Church, to woo the people with sophistry, and to take control of the society. We see the same thing in the present situation.

THREE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER JESUS DIED ON A ROMAN cross, the emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Christians, who had once been persecuted by the empire, became the empire, and those who had once denied the sword took up the sword against their neighbors. Pagan temples were destroyed, their patrons forced to convert to Christianity or die. Christians whose ancestors had been martyred in gladiatorial combat now attended the games, cheering on the bloodshed. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. On July 15, 1099, Christian crusaders lay siege to Jerusalem, then occupied by Fatimite Arabs. They found a breach in the wall and took the city. Declaring “God wills it!” they killed every defender in their path and dashed the bodies of helpless babies against rocks. When they came upon a synagogue where many of the city’s Jews had taken refuge, they set fire to the building and burned the people inside alive. An eyewitness reported that at the Porch of Solomon, horses waded through blood. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Through a series of centuries-long inquisitions that swept across Europe, hundreds of thousands of people, many of them women accused of witchcraft, were tortured by religious leaders charged with protecting the church from heresy. Their instruments of torture, designed to slowly inflict pain by dismembering and dislocating the body, earned nicknames like the Breast Ripper, the Head Crusher, and the Judas Chair. Many were inscribed with the phrase Soli Deo Gloria, “Glory be only to God.” Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. In a book entitled On Jews and Their Lies, reformer Martin Luther encouraged civic leaders to burn down Jewish synagogues, expel the Jewish people from their lands, and murder those who continued to practice their faith within Christian territory. “The rulers must act like a good physician who when gangrene has set in proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow,” he wrote. Luther’s writings were later used by German officials as religious justification of the Holocaust. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

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.

By definition, conspiracy theories imply a coordinated plot by a hostile group. But the most successful conspiracy theories also imply the existence of another group: victims. Theorists become more devout when they identify as part of population under attack, the researchers noted. The more a person identifies with a persecuted "ingroup," the more likely they are to suspect evil deeds by a threatening "outgroup" with which they do not identify. In a 2015 study, for example, Indonesian students were more likely to believe conspiracy theories about Western countries staging terror attacks if researchers first emphasized the students' Muslim faith and described the West as a threat to Muslims. Americans are no more immune than Indonesians. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union's KGB spread rumors throughout the United States that the CIA had engineered the HIV virus to wipe out the country's Black and gay populations. Often, groups that have been dealt a bad hand can be more likely to perceive the world in a conspiratorial light due to past suffering, be it the result of a deliberate conspiracy or passive societal failings. So while the anti-Black HIV rumors were false, the theory took off with some Black Americans who remembered the country's history of documented medical plots against people of color.

No, Mary must not give until she had counted the cost of that gift, until she was restored in body and mind, and was able to form a considered judgment. Then Stephen must tell her the cruel truth, she must say: 'I am one of those whom God marked on the forehead. Like Cain, I am marked and blemished. If you come to me, Mary, the world will abhor you, will persecute you, will call you unclean. Our love may be faithful even unto death and beyond—yet the world will call it unclean. We may harm no living creature by our love; we may grow more perfect in understanding and in charity because of our loving; but all this will not save you from the scourge of a world that will turn away its eyes from your noblest actions, finding only corruption and vileness in you. You will see men and women defiling each other, laying the burden of their sins upon their children. You will see unfaithfulness, lies and deceit among those whom the world views with approbation. You will find that many have grown hard of heart, have grown greedy, selfish, cruel and lustful; and then you will turn to me and will say: "You and I are more worthy of respect than these people. Why does the world persecute us, Stephen?" And I shall answer: "Because in this world there is only toleration for the so-called normal." And when you come to me for protection, I shall say: "I cannot protect you, Mary, the world has deprived me of my right to protect; I am utterly helpless, I can only love you.

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. 2Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. 3I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified [1] by the law; you have fallen away from grace. 5For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. 7You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? 8This persuasion is not from him who calls you. 9A little leaven leavens the whole lump. 10I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. 11But if I, brothers, [2] still preach [3] circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. 12I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves! 13For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. Keep in Step with the Spirit 16But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21envy, [4] drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Bear One Another’s Burdens