Chapter 12 Modern And Future
Over the centuries between the Protestant Reformation and today, there have been reports of men and women who bore witness of Christ even unto death. Likewise, there are reports of those threatened and under sentence of death who were delivered by God. Martyrdom and miraculous deliverance will always go hand in hand, even as we have the two linked in Hebrews 11.
We have all heard of the persecutions endured by our brethren in Soviet bloc countries, and even the slight lessening of this during Russia's window-dressing of humanity in 1989 does not blot out the memory of many spending years in inadequate prisons and others who were martyrs for the faith.
Many Christians, however, were surprised to read in the pages of Christianity Today, March 1989, the following article:
"Two Christians Martyred
"Two young Christian workers were stoned to death in Mexico by angry mobs in separate incidents that probably took place the same day, January 15 (1989).
"According to the Mexico City daily newspaper Excelsior, 35-year-old preacher Abelino Jerez Hernandez was killed by `more than 100 angry Catholics.' A police spokesman said Jerez was `first chased out of town and then attacked with stones' until he died. The newspaper stated that none of the attackers has been arrested, despite the state government's claim to have identified most of them.
"Early the following day, the body of 21-year-old Julio Davalos Morales was discovered in an empty lot just outside Mexico City. Nearby were his briefcase, which was full of Christian tracts, and several bloodied rocks. No suspects are in custody."
Missions researcher David Barrett is mentioned in a religious news article in the Bible Baptist Tribune, August 9, 1989. Barrett says that an average of 325,000 Christians have been killed for the faith each year over the last quarter century, and even though some Christians think this is too astronomical a figure (it would total 8,125,000), Barrett claims it is accurate, noting that "martyrs are believers in Christ who lose their lives in situations of witness as a result of human hostility."
"Martyrs", he continues, "are not necessarily people who would be considered unusually heroic or pious. The church knows the names of only 15,000 such heroic martyrs."
In recent years, Christians have been martyred in the Soviet Union, Vietnam, India, Ethiopia, Uganda, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, El Salvador and Iran.
Barrett claims that in Uganda 100,000 of the killings ordered by Idi Amin involved Christians in situations of witness. He estimates that sixteen million Christians were executed under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
While it may be difficult to ascertain the exact figures and to know how many were truly born-again Christians, there is evidence that many have suffered martyrdom for Christ in this generation.
Some Christian writers have taken accounts of past and present martyrdoms and have made many of God's people paranoid about the possibility of a new Inquisition being levelled at Bible believers by the Roman Catholic Church. We have been told that only by our attacking Rome >in no uncertain terms can this blood shed be averted, and have been assured that the printing ministries of these particular Christians have indeed kept back the forces of evil from slaughtering Christians en masse already.
We read that when the forces of evil take over, the first item on the agenda is to find every Bible pastor (whose name is supposed to be recorded in the Vatican) and put him to death.
The very fact that some Christians would be filled with fear at such a prospect is indicative of the shallowness of their faith. It would have been strange, indeed, if the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 who faced martyrdom would have thought this was the end of their existence. Actually, many martyrs, although subject to severe pain, went to their deaths as though preparing to meet their Heavenly Bridegroom, Who indeed welcomed them to Heaven much as He did the first martyr, Stephen.
Some have even thought that a recurring of martyrdoms in the Christian Church could well be the only purifying that would separate God's true people from the shallow, sham Christians that flood our churches today. There would be those who "out of weakness would be made strong", and others who would recant to save their miserable hides.
What can we say of the present and the future? If more persecution does come, perhaps it will help to make up for the exorbitant luxury that most of God's people are living in today. And perhaps the lack of that persecution is keeping the Church from being what it could be if it were deprived of some material ease and had to face actual persecution and death.
It is God's building, and He knows what is best for it. We would be foolish to state we would like to see persecution come, but equally foolish if we feel it is job number one to keep it from coming.
Let us learn from those who went before - some to the stake or to drowning; others, equally brave, who lived out their natural lives in God's service. The lesson we must learn is to be faithful, in life or in death, in prosperity or in need, in sickness or in health. It is to those that are faithful that those most blessed words will come, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
"O God to us may grace be given to follow in their train."