History of Freedom, Martyrdom & Persecution

Now, let's go ahead and pace our way through this. Last time we looked at the history of the relationship between church and government over the centuries of church history, and this week we're kind of looking at another part of the same aspect, in great part, and that's the history of freedom, martyrdom, and persecution. Now, the truth is there is so much that we could cover on that subject that I'm not even going to try, or I'd have to be speaking supersonically. So what we're going to do is this.

We're going to look at some big picture items for each of these eras. What's the big trend? And then take a couple of examples, or a few examples, in each era. And that'll give you a flavor for what's been the big pattern, and it'll also give you some idea of what's personal details. Because when people were martyred and persecuted over the centuries, And when they experienced freedom, that was something personal, wasn't it? It was person to person, they went through it.

And so we'll want to not just see the big picture and the broad sweep, but we'll also want to look at some details. Because I think that helps us get the right perspective on it. Okay, we're ready to go? Ready? Okay, all right. Here we go. Now this is one just to let you know, this is an introductory item here. Compliments of crystal here. Okay. Just for fun. Okay, ready? Here we go. One of the things that we always like to start off with is what's the biblical perspective, okay?

And one of the things that Paul wrote to Timothy, this is 2 Timothy, basically Paul's last letter, okay? Paul is writing his last letter to Timothy, and what does he say? Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Now, does that persecution always come in the same form? No, it comes in different forms, doesn't it? In our culture, it comes in one form. In another culture, it comes in a different form. But just a recognition that this is something that is not a maybe, might, sort of be, but instead a given. This here is a copy of one of Paul's early letters, and this is the inside of the Mamertine prison in Rome, which is thought to be the last place that Paul made residence before he was beheaded.

Okay, you have on your handout as well, and I'll just hit them quickly, a couple of public domain resources. These first two I'm going to be including in the CD that you'll be getting later on. But those are available and you can also get them in print if the CD doesn't fit for you. I'm going to turn the sound off here because that's nerve-wracking. There we go. And there's also current info. You can get up-to-date info from persecution.com if you're into the internet and that gives you latest information. Some of the last things we'll see today will be from that website. Now, during the apostolic era, one of the things to remember is that initially the church was just thought up as a sect of the Jews. That was how they saw it.

And in fact, for the first 10 years of the church, roughly speaking, even the Christians didn't quite understand that this was supposed to go beyond the Jews. If you remember, it was Acts chapter 10 where the Gentiles were brought into the church And Peter, when he went back to Jerusalem, had to do some explaining. And I'm paraphrasing here, he says, it dawned on me that this was for them too. Now, the Jews in that early period were really the only ones to substantially persecute the Christians during that period of time.

It was largely the Jews, but that was to change quickly. The Gentiles, When they became believers, that began a shift. What that shift was, was now you started having more Gentiles in the church than Jews. And you started spreading beyond just Israel. And the Jews would point out, hey, these people aren't Jewish, and make that point to the Roman authorities. So increasingly, the Romans began to take interest. But it took time.

Okay, the Book of Acts records the first Christian martyr, Stephen. Stephen was a deacon, so guess what, if you're a deacon here at Holly Hills, anyway. At any rate, what's interesting is here's Paul, then called Saul, stood by as this first martyr died. Paul's indications are that he stood by a great number of other killings of Christians until he became one himself. The first martyred apostle was James, the brother of John. Isn't it interesting that we have James, the brother of John, as the first martyr, and then the last of the apostles to die was John himself? So James and John, the brothers, kind of bookended the apostles.

Then, during the New Testament times, there was freedom from wide Roman persecution during that time. Basically, here's the Roman Empire, and they're looking at, this is sort of some far eastern portion of the empire, so it wasn't close to Rome as Christianity first began. And so, you also have not only remote, but a very small percentage of the empire, less than 1%, estimates of three-tenths to six-tenths of 1% by the end of the first century. So it's not only remote from Rome, in great part, but the church was just small in numbers. So the Roman Empire figured they had lots of other things to contend with.

In great part, initially, they didn't focus a lot of attention on persecuting Christians. So far as freedom was concerned, if you were in a rural area, that tended to be more freedom. You're just out away from the masses of people. The other thing you notice is that some groups reacted more favorably. Here you have on the one hand, you've got groups like the people in Thessalonica, and here's the Jews from Thessalonica persecuting Paul and his companions severely, and then right nearby in Berea. Remember what the Bereans said? What did they do? What did the Bereans do that was different? Yeah, they search the scripture. So one of them is just reacting, and the other is searching the scripture. So differences of reaction between the groups would also provide opportunities for freedom.

Alright, here is the Colosseum in Rome. And one of the things that is interesting here, this Colosseum was built, well known, and this Colosseum is built prior to AD. but it wasn't initially built for and used for persecuting Christians, even though later on that's what it got known for. Now, I notice some of you are chuckling at this up-and-down little thing, and that isn't just to be funny.

Here's the deal. They actually had a big cover over the top. It was approximately two football fields wide in each direction. And so what they would do, they actually would lift up this huge awning over the thing. And that is why you see that going up and down there.

Pardon? This is not a cheesecake. No. This is not a cheesecake. Thank you. Yeah. It's not a cake collapsing. This is, in fact, the awning that they would put over the top of the Colosseum. This was a deluxe installation. This is a deluxe installation.

And later on, of course, there was some wreckage to it. The inside is seen here, and there was a wooden floor, so that underneath you had a place to keep the animals and route them in different ways, and let people in. So what would happen, and let me switch to the next frame here.

Here is inside the Colosseum, and what they would do is, of course, you'd have the people gathered around. Here would be the Christians gathering. And then they would have floors with the opening and they'd let the lions and other animals up to take on the Christians from the floor because they had, back up, they had this substantial series of hallways and rooms and things underneath that they could kind of manage the different events from the floor. So here these lions would come up and other animals would come up and then they would take on the Christians.

This is a drawing to give you an idea. It was, by the way, a major industry of the time to replace the sand in here. It was hauled from Egypt by ship. It was a major industry to replace the sand because it would get so filled with blood and carnage. But that was later. Initially it was built for sport and gladiator type games. Even though we hear about it, it was built during the New Testament era, but not used for persecution of Christians until later. Yes? Yes. Yes, they were able to flood it, and they actually have mock ship battles in the arena as well. Amazing the stuff they did, and including covering the whole thing up.

If it sprinkled lightly, it didn't matter. If it was a hot day, it didn't matter. You wouldn't have, you know, sun in your eyes and that kind of thing because they had this huge awning. Pardon? Yes, isn't that amazing? It's centuries ahead of its time in terms of the design. It is amazing to think of what they've built into it. Okay. The persecution and martyrdom of the apostles. And by the way, I think you have earlier in your handouts, whatever happened to the apostles. Okay. And that'll kind of give you a little more detail.

The main thing we want to point out here, we of course mentioned James, the brother of John, was the first apostle martyred that's recorded in scripture. Outside of that, we have extra-biblical accounts. I want to caution you that those extra-biblical accounts are varying reliability, so that if you read something that's outside of scripture about how this apostle died and that one died, I would not put that on the same level of reliability as scripture. Nonetheless, those are the indications that we have. That's what we have to work with. And then, one of the other things to point out with John here, extra-biblical accounts record that John had been boiled in oil, but miraculously saved through it. That could be. It may not be pure story, but it is an extra-biblical account, so we don't want to put that on the same level of fact and history and infallibility of scripture.

At the end of the reign of Domitian, he was assassinated in 96, as many of the Roman emperors were, then John was released. It was typical, not always, but typical for someone who had been given a sentence under one emperor to be released at the death of the emperor. And that was likely the case with John here. 96 to 312, we're going into the early church period after the end of the death of John, and into the time where Constantine then made Christianity legal.

This is a period of time we frequently hear about when we hear about Christians being persecuted. You should have on your handout there, more than... because this is hard to read, I'm sure, on your handout, but you should have a special handout, and that's why I've got this letter S here, a special handout that gives this list. While the Roman Empire, generally speaking, was antagonistic to Christianity, there were 10 waves of persecution, and your handout series should list those. So you have the detail there, and you look at it to get a little bit more specific on it. The thing to remember is that it was really these waves of persecution that brought the Christians out into the arenas and into substantial persecution.

One of those persecutions, particularly towards the end, was one in which that's where they made Christian scriptures illegal. And that was one of the things that put pressure on the Christians to determine what's scripture and what's not. Because it was a matter of saying, what am I going to die for? What's worth dying for? and so you had to decide. It was one of the things that brought Christians to really settle on that issue. We have here a few specific ones that we point out. These you've got special handouts for and we'll take a look at here in just a minute.

Here were the Emperor's temples. This is one from Domitian which is in Ephesus at the time of John. By the way, John, in his later years, lived in Ephesus. This is what the extra-biblical recordings have. This was the temple to Demetian that you had to go to and worship.

Everybody had to do that in order not to get into trouble for not worshiping the emperor. This is the one in Ephesus for Hadrian. There were others as well. The government would fund those. People would say, like in Ephesus, the officials would make an application to Rome, and Rome would look over the applications and say, sure, we'll pay for Hadrian's temple there, and Donatian's temple there, and one to Tiberius here, and they'd pay for them.

So, now, a libelist was required over time, and that's a certificate from the government that said, yes, you have worshipped at the Emperor's temple, and that proves that you're a loyal citizen, you're loyal to Rome. It was not seen as so much a religious event, although it was, as a statement of loyalty.

And if you didn't have that, which many Christians didn't, you're in trouble. So, what happened? They required this certificate. Christians responded in a few ways. Some of them said, I am NOT going to go for that certificate. And then when somebody would point out, hey, this guy didn't get his certificate, then the Roman officials would be after him, and he'd be in trouble. There were some who forged a certificate to try to get through this thing. Here's my certificate, and so if the official asked, they had it, but they didn't really do it.

Of course, that got them in deep trouble if that was discovered. Others complied under pressure. By the way, that complying under pressure made a real problem. Once the church became legal, do you accept those believers among you? Once they had complied. That was a big issue at the time.

Now let's step into The next period, 312 to 590, is the imperial period where Christianity, remember, was made not only at first legal, 312, 313 made the official religion, and 324 the only legal religion. So that shift took place here. And remember, one of the things we've pointed out is that there was a division in the western and eastern empires. Well, here's one of the impacts.

After Christianity was declared legal, the Eastern Empire was under separate administration. Well, guess what? The Eastern Emperor didn't like the fact that Christianity was made legal. So guess what he did? In the Eastern part of the Empire, Christianity was still persecuted.

While in the Western part of the Empire, it was official. So this is a very strange, confusing time. It's like, okay, here's this declaration. It's now legal, but that's only where it was accepted in the Western part. It took time before Christianity became legalized in practice in the Eastern Empire.

Now, you have a handout. It happened in Sebast. It's a special handout in your series. And your special handout doesn't look quite like this, but this is the way it starts. And it tells about these 40 soldiers of Sebast they were in the Eastern Empire, this was about 320 so it is a period of time when on the West Christianity is legal and is in fact the official religion and four years later it would be declared the only official religion, the only religion and yet here in the Eastern part of the Empire, what's happening? Christians are still dying for their faith. In Sebast, here are these soldiers, and I'll give you the quick summary The soldiers were told, hey, you're Roman soldiers, you've got to declare your patriotism by worshipping the emperor. And they said, no, we're not.

And so they took all their clothes off, put them out in the middle of the ice, and built fires around the edge so that it would be very welcoming to them to come to the side. And so the Christians stayed out in the middle of the frozen lake and sung songs as long as they could and then as hours went by finally one of them broke down and ran to the shore and ran into the place where he could worship the emperor and at that time another one ran into the middle and said I'm a Christian and died with the rest so anyway that's the story you have the fuller details in your more detailed handout Here's this strange situation during this period of time.

Imagine being in a spot... I mean, we have the freedom to gather here this morning. Imagine being in a spot where here you are, coming from a period of time when the Roman government is persecuting you severely, killing people, taking their scriptures away, destroying any evidence of Christianity they can find, and then overnight, all of a sudden, it's fine. And within a very short period of time, oh, now Christianity is the only religion we allow.

Can you imagine the confusion? The upheaval that that would be? The startling difference that that would make? That would be tough to grapple with, wouldn't it? So now what happens is those who had been practicing the religion openly were persecuted instead. Pagan priests were crucified. their temples either converted to Christian temples or destroyed. Very strange. Very radical turnover. Very immense change of events.

Within less than a century, those who were Christians but stood against the organized church in some practice or beliefs became the persecuted. And that included not only those who were of pagan origins, but also those who, for example, refused infant baptism. It quickly became, if you did not have your child baptized, I think the year is about 431 or thereabouts, illegal. Capital punishment in the Roman Empire.

Very radical change of events. Very radical change of events. Now, as we step into the next period of time, remember 590 was the time, here is Gregory the Great, comes in. He is the first one to be referred to and acting, both of those together, in the full sense of what we call a Pope. There were others before that, we'll cover that later. But here he steps into this role, and so he kind of marks off a period of time there that extends for roughly a thousand years of the Church's history.

Now, the big picture here, the medieval trend Here's now the organized church in greater control over what was the Roman Empire. They're obviously aligned with military and political powers. Now you have a situation of persecution, generally against individual Christians as well as movements that weren't under the blessing of the organized church.

Yes. Yes, I did that on purpose. This is the castle in Heidelberg. Okay. I'm sorry. At the end of the bridge, yes. And on each side there's a moat. Each side of this little bridge there's a moat, right? Is that right? No, it isn't a water channel, but they called that the moat and it was a depressed area that went around that part of the castle. Okay, we're thinking of different spots.

Yeah, this one's over the river. Anyway, yes, that is the one at Heidelberg. And this is the cathedral at Freiburg. But one of the things I think to remember during this period of time is that there was a constant persecution of those who were not under the umbrella of the organized church.

By the way, some of them attempted to be accepted and recognized. And of course, once you do that, and if you get turned down, then you stand out like a sore thumb. You're waving your hand and saying, I'm here, and you don't accept me. So there were those that attempted to do so, that attempted to be accepted, and were rejected, and then became known to the church by doing that, and they couldn't no longer live on the outskirts and stay underground. They waved their hand and brought attention to themselves.

In rural areas, like we found early in the Roman Empire, there was greater freedom on the fringe of established domains. That is, there were areas where the Roman Catholic Church, for example, had power and there were areas outside their power, so there were opportunities outside those particular political domains that weren't connected to the Church of Rome.

And with a few noblemen. There were occasionally noblemen in different areas who would say, hey, I'm not connected and you're welcome to come here. And so there were some that did that as well, and people would, if they were of a mind to be different from the church, would oftentimes move and migrate into those areas where the noblemen were. Hopefully the noblemen would stay in that position, and that was a problem too.

Okay, that's the big picture. Let's take a look at a couple of specific cases. You also have this in your handout. And by the way, this is a page number for your handout. You've got six in each one. This is a specific case in 1210 AD under the orders of the Pope Innocent III. There were soldiers who were assigned to kill a particular group that was considered heretical. By the way, you and I would probably, if we studied what these folks believe, would probably say they're heretics too.

We might react differently, but nonetheless, That was the thought. So what happened is, here's the soldiers, they've been assigned to go and take care of these heretics, and so they come by the Abbot of Citeaux, that's a monastery kind of in the central part of France there, and that abbot told the soldiers, kill them all, God will know his own. That was the philosophy that they carried out. But that abbot did not have a unique perspective, by the way. That was pretty common approach to things.

And you notice we have reference there, 2 Timothy 2.19. Anybody look that up?

2 Timothy 2.19?

What does it tell them? Does that say, kill them all, God will know his own? What does it say? Okay, alright. So what they did is they took a biblical truth. The Lord knows those were his, right? That's biblical. But they took it one step farther. Well, the Lord knows those were his. Just kill them all and the Lord will sort it out. That was the approach. And this is one particular case. I could give you many, many more, but I took this because it's typical.

They went in and by some estimates up to 100,000 were killed in that attack. The numbers vary as I read different studies and accounts of it. And one reason is nobody went around and did a body count, you know, like an official body count. It was just by reading what was recorded, they put together a number about in that range. So if you read up on it, you encounter different numbers, they'll still be in about that approximate range. Now, what happened is they would go in and there would be, okay, here's a group of Cathars in this area. Anybody else who, you know, was of any group in there, The soldiers don't know who's who, right? So that's why the abbot just said, kill them all. You don't have to discern who's who, just go in and slaughter everybody. They did take about 400 some odd captive and grill them and then kill them. So they didn't kill everybody right away.

But anyway, this is one instance. There were true Christians among them, as well as those who we would consider heretics ourselves. We would strongly disagree with what they said. But case in point, and this is how it was carried out quite commonly. Here's another instance here, Jan Hus. And by the way, I'm just picking a very small sampling. And you'll also find the spell different ways. You'll see it Jan Hus and Jan Hus and Jan Hus and everything else.

But this is closer to the spelling. You notice this is before the Reformation period. He was a Czech priest. He stood on the principle that he would not comply with anything that wasn't according to scriptures. Would we agree with that? Yeah. We would say, yeah, I'll stand with that.

And that's basically what he told them. Now, he called vigorously for reform. He was very outspoken. They, of course, imprisoned him. He was pressed to recant his position. And on being repressed, or pressed to recant, he was burned for state refusal, July 6, 1415.

That happened time and time again. In Italy, Savonarola was another one of roughly this same era, calling, you know, he says, terrible immorality among the hierarchy, you know, in the church, and similarly killed for his faith. If you read through Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and I was talking with Gale about that earlier, many accounts of these kinds of things, sometimes it's difficult to sit there and read it one story after another.

Now, we step into the second to last period. Now we're into the Reformation. Remember it was October 31st, what we call Halloween now, October 31st, 1517, that's when Martin Luther goes and nails his 95 theses up on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg. And that starts this period of the Reformation.

And one of the things that happened, boy, I mean, this was a time of severe polarization. And it was a political and military polarization. What had happened is if there was a nobleman, a king, whatever the particular level was, And if he was not particularly enchanted with his relationship with Rome, this was an opportunity for him to take a position of opposition, and also to align himself with some spiritual statement or position or doctrinal stance that was contrary to Rome, and a basis for doing so. So some of them, it was not necessarily that they were spiritually motivated, as much as it's an opportunity to distance themselves from Rome and stay away from the arm of Rome.

So what would happen then is you'd have the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans, and the Calvinists. And by the way, Calvinists tended to pick certain positions where they were largely defensive, but there are exceptions to that. But the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics, they would just battle it out. But notice that the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran position was not necessarily the spiritual stance in every case. In many cases, it was just a political and military stance. In the same way that people get called Christians now that are only Christians culturally. And the same thing would happen here. People would fight, and it's, whose side are you on? It's, well, I'm on this guy's side because I like it.

And not necessarily because there was real spiritual founding for where they stood. Then, what you have, because of that, is those who weren't aligned, and the largest group of those we call the Anabaptists, were the ones who would be persecuted. Why?

They would say, I am not going to align myself with some government. And so they would be the ones that didn't have some army defending them. No castles, no armies, no equipment to fight in a battle. Many of them took a pacifist stance Not so much because they fundamentally believed in pacifism, but because of the fact that that meant they were not aligned. It was the way they could refuse to be aligned with somebody.

A good number of these were killed. A lot of these, I tried to get pictures. The first Anabaptists in this particular movement, I didn't want pictures of them. Nobody got that down because these guys, as soon as they said, hey, I'm an Anabaptist, they were gone. Many of them drowned, others burned at the stake. I think we gave a figure last week, somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 Anabaptists were killed during this period of time. Here's some particular examples. Here's 1554, the burning of David van der Leeuwen in Leuven.

And boy, this name is something. But Geiselens, I hope I'm not too far off. What's that? Geiselens, okay. Good. And basically, they just burn them in the middle of the town square. And this soldier here has a 10-foot pole. Have you ever heard about, I won't touch that with a 10-foot pole? The soldier's got a 10-foot pole in his hand, okay? And he's checking to make sure they're thoroughly burnt.

And why were they killed? Because they got re-baptized when they believed. That's why they were killed. And here's another one. Balthasar Hubmeyer. He was initially stretched on the rack. They stretched him on the rack and tried to get him to confess to some things. And you won't believe who stretched him on the rack. One of the reformers, Zwingli, put him on the rack and just tortured him because he was Anabaptist. Amazing. Here's what Balthasar Hubmeier said, and you and I looking at it would probably agree with most of what he said.

Christ did not come to butcher, to murder, to burn, but that man might have life and that more abundantly. Amen? Okay. So long as a man lives, we should pray and hope for his repentance. A Turk, this is the Islamic hordes, or a heretic is to be overcome not with sword or fire, but by patience and weeping. We are therefore to wait patiently for the judgment of God, Every Christian has a sword against the godless, and that is the Word of God. Isn't that great?

So here's this guy, a fellow reformer, if you will, was the one that put him on the rack, tortured him to try to get him to say and confess and give out some information. And then finally, he was killed by the Roman Catholic Church. But here's the strange, for instance, tortured by the Reformers on one hand, that are trying to reform the Catholic Church, and then, on the other hand, losing his life to the Roman Catholics, and Zwingli himself lost his life in a battle against the Roman Catholic cantons in Switzerland. So, crazy, isn't it? Crazy. Alright, now, here's an instance as we step into this period of time.

The French Huguenots. Now, Tom, I think it was you earlier that had asked Some question about the origin of the name Huguenots. I think there was a suggestion that that might have come from a fellow by the name of Hugo. Interestingly, nobody seems to know what the origin of that name is. Basically, they were French Calvinists. They were part of the group out of Calvin and Geneva, out of Switzerland, and they had moved powerfully into France. At this point in time, they were reported to have 2,050 churches in France.

I mean lots, a whole bunch of people. But what happened is they were seen as an insurgent group, they were seen as a revolutionary group by the government. So what had taken place? There was some tension there, but they applied for a wedding, and this wedding was between some noblemen, and the Huguenots leaders thought that this would result in some lessening of the tensions between the two groups. They were looking for resolution. They got permission to hold this wedding. Masses of Huguenots flooded into Paris for the wedding.

Then, on what's called the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, they were slaughtered. 10,000 of them initially, by some estimates, some say a few, but what happened is the first day there were several thousand, and then it swept throughout France, Estimates of 70,000 dead, and I put about that because some numbers are higher, some numbers are lower. 70,000 dead by October, and this started in the end of August. And they just went through and just slaughtered Huguenots or anybody that they thought was a Huguenot throughout France. That was not all of them, by the way, but not by any means. It was a great many more, but it was a huge slaughter.

And they even have a commemorative medal for the death of the Huguenots, and that's the medal. And you can see it today. There was a commemorative medal, there was a great celebration for the slaughter of the Huguenots, an example of more of what took place.

Now, as we step into 1648 to the present, there is a change that takes place. Remember, 1648 was the turning point that came with the Peace of Westphalia. The Peace of Westphalia is where finally the The various governments sat down and said, hey, let's stop fighting. It was the end of the Thirty Years' War, and millions were killed during that Thirty Years' War. The end of it came 1648.

And then, the thing to remember is although battles between countries over which denomination am I from settled down in great part, What still was common was within each of those domains to persecute others who weren't of the official alignment. So if you happened to be in the wrong area, then you were in trouble. So even though the Thirty Years War had ended, persecution within each of those domains continued on for quite some time, as we'll see here shortly.

Notice the Huguenots, they had been persecuted way back in the early 1500s. Now we see 1685, Huguenots were leaving France by the hundreds of thousands. They went to different places. One of them they went to, for example, was Florida, still in the 1500s. They went to Florida and they established a settlement there and it was wiped out. But that's one of the places they went. Germany is one of the places that they also were given a free haven. And there were a number of places like that where they came out of France in great numbers and established places and they also came across to the American colonies in great numbers as well. Here's an example on these Huguenots. We have six presidents from Washington to Theodore Roosevelt who were of Huguenot descent. General Patton, Huguenot descent. The DuPonts, Huguenot descent. Vern Peterman, Huguenot descent.

A whole bunch of them came over just coming out of France in droves. And what happened is because these people were very often very productive people with lots of intellectual talents and skills, France drove out their best when they did that to their own ruin, to their own destruction. It is a belief. Basically, there are Frenchmen through and through, but they were Frenchmen who were basically of Calvinist background.

But it was because they were contrary to the government's belief, which was Catholicism, they were driven out in hordes. Hundreds of thousands of them left. The Inquisition continued to roam Catholic-controlled countries even into the early 1800s. Some of Napoleon's troops actually liberated some of the people who were being subject to the Inquisition. We'll go into the detail on that. In the American colonies, Patrick Henry was one who was deeply moved. He went through a town called Pepper, Virginia.

And he came through just after this had happened and saw there had been a dozen pastors who were whipped, one to death, because they lacked the license from the Anglican Church. The one who was whipped to death, Patrick Henry could count the ribs on his back. He had all the flesh whipped off his back.

That is why Patrick Henry He saw that, it was later that month, where he stood up in front of the leaders and he said, give me liberty or give me death. After he saw that, that's what moved him. He went and he checked on the records, let me pull this up, because the official records, he said, what's going on here, he was a lawyer, by the way, and so he dug up the records and the records said that the fellow who was whipped to death said this, I will never submit to taking your license, I am controlled by the Holy Spirit and authorized by God Almighty, and I will not allow you to control me by a license, no matter what you may do to me." That was his statement in court.

So some of this control continued on and actually motivated, in part, the American Revolution. So that was an instance into the 1700s, even the latter part of the 1700s, even though it had been 100 years since the Peace of Westphalia, this internal control was still very much present.

Current status. Let's update it, step into today here. We'll define persecution this way. No nation is completely free of persecution wherever Christianity is practiced. Amen? Even here. In Western democratic nations, persecution may occur randomly and spasmodically despite the assumption And by the way, there is sometimes a real disparity between what the official constitution of a government says and the actual practice. These nations we refer to as mostly free. Other nations may be described as hostile or restricted according to the level of persecution.

The U.S. State Department also has a website that you can check out, and that website is updated the first couple of days not the website, the report that they put out is updated the first congressional meeting in September of each year. So just a few weeks from now we will have another report and it's shortly thereafter put on the website.

And that often will get you some objective information. The one thing that it lacks is it doesn't distinguish between Christian persecution and other kinds of persecution, persecution against other groups. But that's an objective source where you can get information. This is a map from Voice of the Martyrs for persecuted Christians in this particular year. I would say that this map probably could be expanded beyond what it is, but nonetheless that's where it stands.

And these are places, you notice largely it's North Africa and the Middle East and then on over into China and then other parts of Asia as well. And in great part what you see now is Persecution that is taking place is either related to repressive governments or Islam or both. Those are the areas. Most of the deaths of believers now are taking place related to Islam.

Let's step into a couple of particular examples. Here's one in Tajikistan. Here's a Baptist fined for talking to passers-by about God. This is a fellow apparently a missionary, you know, coming in and talking about the Lord, and so he gets a fine. You know, that happened just recently here. There's a dateline within the last few weeks here.

Another one here's in Egypt. 17-year-old Nermeen was kidnapped in front of ISIS secondary school in Alexandria. Remember Alexandria? That was the place where Philo was. That's the place where Origen was. Okay? Still present as a city. Her father received a phone call saying that your daughter's been kidnapped and she's now Islamic. She's going to be married to an Islamic man, so end of story for her. That apparently happens quite a bit.

The resistance to Christianity in Egypt and a good number of northern African countries is pretty intense, even though in some cases the government's official position is that we allow religious freedom. What happens is they may allow religious freedom, but it is not enforced. It's not carried out. The government does nothing when persecution takes place.

Then here in Sudan, and this is, I'd say, you know, if you look at the statistics for where Christians are being persecuted severely for their faith, southern Sudan and southern Ethiopia are places that are substantial areas of persecution. Servants Heart, which is an organization that works inside Sudan, informed Voice of the Martyrs on June 3rd that the Sudanese military forces, which are basically Islamic, out of the Islamic government, they attacked 10 villages in the eastern upper Nile.

The troops killed the region's only Christian pastor and his family. By the way, that's their first target. Killed the pastors. Only Christian pastor and his family. Massacred at least 59 unarmed villagers, wounded 15, and abducted 10 children and 6 women. Generally speaking, the children are sold into slavery. We still have slavery in our era. The Christian children are sold into slavery.

Many of them are put under intense Islamic training. And the women are married off, sometimes sold as well, but married off to Islamic men. So basically they're forced to become Islamic. And any men that are involved with those families then are killed off.

That's the pattern. My brother has a good friend who is a pastor who goes over to Sudan from time to time. And he says that they'll not have pastors in large areas because they're their main target. And so when this fellow goes over there to teach and to speak, there are so few pastors there What will happen is he'll show up at six o'clock and the Christians have been at the church praying for him for two hours before they arrive. He'll give his message and then a few will take him off to show him hospitalities and give him a meal while the rest of them will memorize his message for the rest of the day. Until the next time a pastor comes through, the message that he spoke gets repeated every Sunday. That's the way they do it and handle it because the pastors are spread few and far between.

Pakistan, a blasphemy conviction upheld, and this was updated just earlier this month, within a little more than a week here. Pakistani court has upheld the conviction of two Christians, and notice those are not missionaries from outside, those are locals, accused of committing blasphemy against the Islamic holy book, death penalty. Unless something happens, they're going to die. They're going to die. And basically anything contrary to the book is blasphemy against Islam, and so it's fatal.

It's very costly. I know a couple that the wife lived in a little town where I went to high school, and that couple was in Pakistan with the outbreak of the Afghanistan war. They were kind of driven out, but they were wanting to go back, and this is a very dangerous place to be. Current status.

Scholars of Christian persecution estimate the daily average death rates of Christians worldwide to be as high as 1,000 a day. A goodly percentage of that is in southern Sudan and southern Ethiopia. What I took as one example is just like a daily event, just constantly.

Kill the Christians, kill the Christians, kill the Christians. Largely it's Muslim influence and control is the area where that's being carried out. More Christians have died for their faith in the last hundred years than all prior centuries combined. We think of the early church and think of that as a church under persecution, and yes, they were. But in terms of the total numbers, it's this last century that has seen the greatest bloodshed of Christians, the greatest number of Christians dying for their faith. And it is amazing to ponder that it's our time when they're dying in greater numbers. And within the last decade, the rate has been higher than before. If you were to apply this number here, since we last met, 7,000 Christians died for their faith. Since we last met. You start multiplying this over a period of time. This is, in the rough numbers, a third of a million Christians every year. If you were to carry this number out. It's a shocking number to look at.

Now, as we go through this, we're going to be stepping into, next week, Churches and Church Governance. This is dealing with elders, and how do we get this name Bishop, and Archbishop, and all these other names that have come up. So we'll be taking a look at that. I've been buzzing along here. Any questions? Gail?

That last screen with the picture of the Congo? There are situations, you know, you keep hearing stories about revolutionary activities and things like that, and quite often what will happen in those revolutionary events, and this is one of them in the Congo, Christians end up, you know, if you get a church gathering or a church school, they just go in and slaughter them because they figure they're aligned one way or the other. Yeah, just wipe them out. You're a church and you support the government, right? Okay, well we don't like that. You're dead.

So there'll be things like that that will take place. Several years ago, for example, Nigeria, it was a federal law in Nigeria that you had to have Bible classes in school. Northern Nigeria is now being taken over by Islamic groups, kind of what we would call county by county. And Islam in the northern part of Nigeria is taking over and so it's being pushed out. And it's just one of those cases where you get revolutionary groups coming in and so what do they do? They just go in and there's a church, slaughter them.

Yeah, other questions? Yeah. Is the difference between Islamic and Muslim, are they the same? It's basically the same. The last time we'll go through the origins and history of Islam. Islam has of course different sects and groups There's two main ones and we'll talk about that when the time comes. But yeah, it's basically Islam, Muslim, Islamic, talking about the same thing in general.

Other questions? Okay, overwhelmed for now. What's that? Yeah, Perpetua and Felicitas. Yeah, there's a few accounts in there. Perpetua and Felicitas is one that, boy, you'll be disappointed if you've got two pages and you miss the third one. You won't get the rest of the story, right?

So yeah, see Nancy if you find that you're missing that. Remember, I handed out those sheets to kind of get your input on what you'd like to have for this next quarter. I sure welcome your input on those. Talk to me about it personally, call me up, email, I'd love to hear from you. We most certainly want to cover in more detail those things that you're interested in. Okay?

Let's pray. Lord, as we think of these believers here, many of whom have gone home to be with you for their faith, we know one way or another that all who believe will be called home. But we do pray, Lord, for the persecuted church throughout the world and just would ask for them that they would indeed find your grace. Many of them find it difficult to find solid teaching in those areas and we pray for that as well. And we pray for us, Lord, where persecution is much more subtle. Just pray that we would recognize the valuable freedom that we have and cherish it. act by your life in the midst of it. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.