The Apostle Paul gave Christians a sobering warning: "Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution" (2 Timothy 3:12). At the time when this was written, the people of God faced a very real threat of persecution—which often took the form of beatings, imprisonment and even martyrdom.
The Apostle Paul gave Christians a sobering warning: "Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution" (2 Timothy 3:12). At the time when this was written, the people of God faced a very real threat of persecution—which often took the form of beatings, imprisonment and even martyrdom.
For the past 300 years and more, the English-speaking, democratic nations of the world have enjoyed legal systems that largely provide for freedom of religion. The early colonists in what later became the United States of America had often experienced persecution in England and Europe. When the opportunity arose to establish their own legal systems, freedom of religion became a high priority.
The colonists also understood the dangers that state religions can create. Religions that are established by civil governments tend to regard themselves as the one true church. Other churches become regarded as heretical and are subject to state persecution.
In the very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution—Amendment 1 in the Bill of Rights—the federal government was prohibited from establishing any form of state religion. Over time, many other nations began to embrace similar concepts, with the result that most of God’s people now enjoy almost total freedom from severe religious persecution.
There are clear indications in Bible prophecy, however, that this happy situation will not last forever. A great false church that previously sought to "persecute the saints of the Most High" (Daniel 7:25), will—for a short time before the return of Jesus Christ—have a final opportunity to persecute the people of God.
Why, we might ask, does God allow His people to be persecuted? He certainly does have the power to protect them. On one occasion, God sent an angel to rescue the Apostle Peter from prison (Acts 12:3–11). The two witnesses will be given total protection from persecution for three and a half years before God allows them to be killed (Revelation 11:3–5).
The record of history, however, is that such incidents of spectacular protection are unusual, few and far between. Quite often, God does allow His people to suffer persecution. But why does He do so? In this short article, we will look at some of the reasons why God allows His people to suffer in this way.
A Witness to the World
The Apostle Paul spent some five years of his ministry in prison. His work of preaching the Gospel sometimes stirred up the anger of civil and religious leaders. Paul was brought to trial before governors, kings—and even the Emperor Nero. During a violent storm at sea, when Paul was being taken as a prisoner to Rome, God sent an angel to encourage him, and to point out that: "you must be brought before Caesar" (Acts 27:24).
This opportunity—for Paul to take the truth of God to a man who was probably the most important human ruler alive at that time—was too good to miss. Through the context of persecution, the Gospel and other aspects of God’s Truth could reach those in high Imperial office in a way that would have been difficult without such a severe trial falling on Paul.
A Time for Reflection
Some might assume that Paul’s imprisonment was wasted time. After all, consider what extra work in God’s service he could have accomplished if those five years had been spent traveling from place to place, preaching the Gospel and raising up many new Church congregations.
His time was not wasted, however. Paul used it as an opportunity to write a number of epistles. Being confined to a prison cell for long periods of time allowed him to think deeply, reflect and meditate on many things. Would these letters, which are considered to be among Paul’s most inspiring works, have been written at all if he had not been confined by imprisonment?
Unger’s Bible Dictionary makes the interesting point that Luke, Paul’s traveling companion, could well have used the two-year period of Paul’s imprisonment at Caesarea (Acts 24:27) as an opportunity to research and write his version of the Gospel. This port city is located just 30 miles from Nazareth, where Jesus spent much of His early life. Jerusalem, where the final parts of Jesus’ life and ministry took place, is located some 50 miles to the southeast of Caesarea. The intimate details that Luke provides of Christ’s birth and early life may well indicate that he took the opportunity, during this time, to speak to several members of Jesus’ immediate family who were probably still living in the area.
A Trial of Our Faith
God sometimes allows persecution and other trials to come upon His people to try or test their personal faith. A study of the book of Job reveals a fascinating insight into the way that God relates to the people whom He is calling, and with whom He is working. Job was successful and wealthy. As he was living with his wife and children and tending his cattle and sheep, he was unaware that both God and Satan were observing and evaluating his life.
God put a question to Satan: "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?" (Job 1:8).
Satan, although accepting God’s evaluation of Job, questioned Job’s motives. He asserted that Job was only obedient because it paid him to be. If God were to take His blessings and protection away from Job, surely Job’s faith would quickly fail (Job 2:4–6).
God accepted Satan’s challenge, and allowed Satan to persecute Job in a severe way. Although Job had lessons to learn from this trial, he proved Satan to be wrong. Job’s faith in God did not fail (Job 42:5–6). If we have an easy and trouble-free life, God cannot see how we react to pressure and hardship. He sometimes allows trials and persecution to come upon us to test our faith and our relationship with Him.
A Personal Experience
In 1965, as a young man serving in the Royal Navy, I was sentenced to spend a month in a military prison for refusing to work on the Sabbath. This was an extreme form of imprisonment that involved a regime of hard labor, in which prisoners were forced to work almost to the point of exhaustion.
This was not the only trial, however. In a situation like this, other people have almost total control of your life, from the time you wake up till you finally fall asleep. Many of the activities in the life of a Christian—including prayer, Bible study, meditation and fasting—require a degree of personal freedom and privacy. Such conditions hardly exist at all in prison. The people with whom we spend our time—such as family, friends and Church members—do have an influence on us. Can you imagine all such contacts suddenly removed, apart from one letter a week to your next of kin, and all the positive influences around you being replaced by negative ones?
What if the people now surrounding you were murderers, thieves and sex offenders? How would you feel? How would you react? My experience was that God is aware of such situations, and is able to give Christians the ability to endure such scenarios. Paul reminds us: "God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it" (1 Corinthians 10:13).
Yes, God sometimes takes us to the extreme limits of what we can handle as human beings, but He does not abandon us. As He does this, our faith is tested and we learn many important lessons. It is only natural that we would pray that God would protect us or rescue us from such dire situations, but sometimes He responds to us as He responded to the Apostle Paul: "For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake" (Acts 9:16).
Persecution and the Holy Days
The weekly Sabbath is not the only source of persecution for true Christians. Keeping the annual Holy Days of the Bible does, at times, require faith and courage, especially when we keep them within a society that considers them to have been done away.
Late in the first century, the Church was admonished to "contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turned the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ" (Jude 1:3–4).
This attempt by false teachers to subvert the true Church continued into the second century. By that time, the weekly and annual Sabbaths had become key targets of the enemies of God’s Church.
In about 107AD, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was sentenced to die as a martyr at Rome. He was taken, under armed guard, from Antioch to Rome. The long, slow overland journey passed through Asia Minor (Turkey). A number of overnight stops were made at cities along the way, including some of the seven churches of Revelation 2–3. This gave the local congregations an opportunity to send delegations of their members to visit Ignatius, to give him encouragement and bid him farewell. Ignatius, in turn, would hand over a letter to be read in these congregations.
One such letter, written to the brethren of Magnesia (15 miles from Ephesus), reveals some disturbing doctrinal changes that were beginning to be introduced into the Church: "We have seen how former adherents of the ancient customs have since attained to a ‘new hope’; so that they have given up keeping the Sabbath, and now order their lives by the ‘Lord’s day’ instead."
The Bible gives us no valid reason to stop keeping the weekly and annual Sabbaths. The apostates often used bizarre and almost laughable arguments. The Epistle of Barnabas, written in about 130AD, deceptively asserts: "We are very much mistaken if there is anybody at the present time with a heart pure enough to keep holy the day which God has sanctified." The author (not the Barnabas mentioned in Acts) then proceeds to urge his readers to keep Sunday instead of the Sabbath, based on the false argument that "that was when Jesus rose from the dead."
By about 140AD, the church at Rome had abandoned both the weekly and annual Sabbaths, and had started to keep pagan days in their place. Justin Martyr, writing at this time, mentions that true Christians, who wished to obey God, were often shunned and marginalized. By the end of that century, true Christians among these people were almost certain to be "excommunicated" from what had become a false church.
Yes, persecution is often the lot of those that God is calling. But whether or not our personal future includes persecution, we must each be able to say, with confidence: "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18).