Posted on 08/27/2006 8:46:47 AM PDT by DadOfTwoMarines
Christian Martyrs: A VERY long legacy.
Although it is a very hard and controversial point, throughout history there have been ten of thousands of Christians who when “at threat of death” would gladly give their lives rather than renounce their faith is Jesus Christ.
I am not judging the Fox news people… only God will. But the facts of history are replete with contrary behavior.
Here are just a very few….
Agapius: He was brought to the arena with a murderer to be cast to wild animals. The emperor gave clemency to the murderer. When the Christian refused to accept liberty by renouncing his faith, he rushed against a bear let loose upon him. After being mauled by the bear, he was taken to prison. Surviving for one day, stones were bound to his feet, and he was thrown into the sea. (357)
Alpheus: He was scourged and scraped with iron hooks and severe bonds. He received different tortures on the rack, having his feet stretched a night and a day to the fourth hole in the stocks. At length, he was beheaded. (350) Apollonia: They seized this elderly woman, beat her jaws, and broke out all her teeth. They built a fire and threatened to burn her alive unless she would repeat their impious expressions. She appeared to shrink a little, but when allowed to go, she suddenly sprang into the fire and was consumed. (258) Apollonius: He was renowned for his learning and wisdom. After he gave an eloquent defence of the faith before the judge, he was decapitated according to the decree of the senate. (205) Apphianus: When this youth tried to prevent Urbanus from sacrificing to a god, he was seized and torn by the soldiers. He received innumerable stripes on his whole body and was cast into prison. There he was stretched with both feet a night and a day on the rack. When he was brought before the judge and refused to make a sacrifice, his sides were furrowed and scraped to the bone while he was being beaten on the face and neck. When he still did not yield, they covered his feet with linen steeped in oil and set fire to the cloth. The fire penetrated to the bones, but the youth did not die or yield. Defeated, the tormentors returned him to prison. After three days, he was taken again to the judge. This time, as he remained faithful to his belief, he was thrown into the sea and drowned. (355) Blandina: She was tortured by tormentors who took turns from morning till night until they were overcome. She continued to live despite her whole body being torn asunder and pierced. Later, she was bound and suspended on a stake, being exposed as food for wild animals. When none of the animals would touch her, she was taken down from the stake and returned to prison for another time. Then, after scourging, exposure to animals, and roasting, she was thrown into a net and cast before a bull. After much tossing from the animal, she died. (172-179) Cronion: [See the account of Julian. These two received their like torture together.] (259) Ennathas: She was dragged by force and brought before the judge. After being scourged and enduring dreadful abuses, she was stripped of her clothes above the loins. As she was led about the city, she was beaten with thongs of hide. She remained cheerful through this; and, when she was taken back before the judge, she was condemned to the flames. (365, 366) Julian: He was an old man who was afflicted with gout. Having confessed the Lord in front of his accusers, he was carried on a camel throughout the city. In this elevation, he was scourged and finally consumed in an immense fire, surrounded by the thronging crowds of spectators. (259) Metra: An aged man, he was called upon to utter impious statements. When he did not obey, his tormentors beat his body with clubs, and pricked his face and eyes. After that, they led him to the suburbs, where they stoned him. (257) Origen: He endured many torments to the body because of his faith. He was under an iron collar, spent time in the deepest recesses of the prison, for many days was extended and stretched to four holes on the rack, was threatened by fire, and had other tortures. The judge tried hard to protract his life in order to prolong his sufferings. (255) Polycarp: He was a teacher from Asia who taught multitudes not to sacrifice to the gods nor worship them. Through a vision he had, he said that he must be burned alive. After he was bound to the stake, he prayed and awaited the fire. The flames gave the appearance of an oven around him. He was in the midst, not like burning flesh, but like gold and silver purified in the flames. A fragrant odour, like the fumes of incense, or other precious aromatic drugs, was perceived. When the persecutors saw that his body could not be consumed by fire, they commanded the executor to plunge his sword into him. When this was done, such a quantity of blood gushed forth that the fire was extinguished. His body was later burned according to the custom of the Gentiles, and his bones were buried. (143) Pothinus: He had performed the ministrations of the episcopate of Lyons. Although past ninety years of age, very infirm of body, he was taken to the tribunal where he stood firm in his faith. He was unmercifully dragged away and endured many stripes, while those nearby abused him with their hands and feet. Then, after two days in prison, he died. (174) Procopius: Before he was tried by imprisonment, he was taken before the tribunal of the governor. When commanded to sacrifice to the gods, he declared that he knew only one to whom it was proper to sacrifice. When ordered to make libations [the ritual of pouring out wine or oil in honor of a god] to the four emperors, he stated a sentence which did not please his accusers. Immediately, he was beheaded. (349) Quinta: They took her to the temple of an idol and tried to force her to worship. When she turned away in disgust, they tied her by the feet and dragged her through the city, dashing her against the millstones and scourging her at the same time. When they completed the dragging where they started, they stoned her. (257) Sanctus: He suffered many torments devised by men. When these men could do no more, they fastened hot plates of brass to the most tender parts of his body. He withstood all the suffering, but his body was one continued wound, mangled and shrivelled, that had entirely lost the form of man to the external eye. Again, he passed through the tortures. These included the strokes of the scourge, the draggings and lacerations from the beasts, other tortures demanded by the audience, and the iron chair upon which his body was roasted. Other tortures followed until he died. (172-176) Serapion: He was seized in his own house. After torturing him with the severest cruelties and breaking all his limbs, they threw him headlong from an upper storey of the house. (258) Simeon: He was the son of Cleophas, a descendant of David, and the second bishop of Jerusalem. When he was one hundred and twenty years old, a search was made for any descendants of David. Simeon was one who was taken into custody. After he had been tormented for several days, he was crucified. (118) Theodosia: She was not yet eighteen years old, yet was distinguished for her faith and virtue. As she approached some prisoners before the judgment seat to salute them, she was seized by the soldiers and led away to the commander. She was tortured cruelly, having her sides and breasts furrowed with instruments even to the bones. She kept a cheerful and joyful countenance throughout. Then she was ordered to be cast into the sea. (359) Timotheus: He endured a multitude of tortures. Then he was condemned to be consumed by a slow and gentle fire. Throughout it all, he exhibited an undeniable proof of his sincere devotedness to God. (352) Ulpian: He was a young man who suffered dreadful torments and the most severe scourgings. After all of these, he was sewn in a raw bull's hide, together with a dog and a poisonous asp, and thrown into the sea. (357) Zaccheus: [See the account of Alpheus. These two received their like torture together.] (350)
Paragraphs would help this post a great deal.
Recent or quasi-recent history??
Wouls you like the thousands of names of those who in 2005 died for their faith?? I dont understand your "quasI-history" question. Do you not understant that their are millions of Christians who would gladly die rather than renounce their faith. (Kind of like their Lord did...:)
"Do you not understant that their are millions of Christians who would gladly die rather than renounce their faith. "
And there are vastly more million who would lie to captors to obtain their release. Doing anything under duress is quite possible for most of us. Don't be so sure of what you would do in the same circumstances.
Would you like the thousands of names of those who in 2005 died for their faith?? I don't understand your "quasI-history" question. Please understand that there are millions of Christians who would humbly suffer death rather than renounce their faith. (Kind of like their Lord did...:)
Best to you.
Then again, we're talking about reporters who are now letting the world know that they were forced to convert at gunpoint. Certainly, they could have refused to convert, and would likely have been executed, and there would have been two more names added to the long, long list of those killed by Islam.
Then again, I wasn't there, I'm not them, and I don't know what faith, if any, these men have. I'm not in a position to judge what they did, or why they did it. All I know is that they survived, and now they're telling the world what happened.
start your list of those who have died in 2005. Not those who are "gladly" willing.
I tend to believe most Christians believe there's a greater value in life and helping others in need. You've been given a body and mind (temple) to help those less fortunate.
Martyrdom sets the extreme standard for anynumber of things. It could be the standard for honorable Christian principles, conviction, bravery, justice etc. In this case it would have merely set the standard for extreme stupidity, since the words are meaningless under obvious duress and were traded for his life.
God denies salvation to those who deny him, but if you think God would consider that “conversion” video at gunpoint as a denial, that’s you’re belief alone, and not anything biblically supported.
I’m sure God’s no more fooled by their phony gunpoint “conversion” to Islam than you’d be fooled by a supermodel’s gunpoint expressions of love for you.
I don’t think these journalists are any more endangered in the Middle East today than they were last week. I doubt there’s much if any difference between the group of Muslims who want to kill an American reporter and a group that wants to kill an American reporter who read a conversion statement at gunpoint and recounted when free, but who knows.
I’m sure the press at even al-Jazeera won’t report favorably on the press being captured and forced to convert for freedom. There are probably dozens of kook Wahhabist-Salafist rags that will run editorials in its favor, but they’re just preaching to the jihadists. This "conversion video" so highlights the “resistance’s” real motives while enraging both journalists and Christians that it’s a huge propaganda victory for the West.
None of us know really what we would do, but the Christian will let the HS speak for him.
Yes. But there are also newer Christian martyrs, the New Martyrs of the Ottoman Yoke, many of whom had converted to Islam, whether under threat of force, or because of the blandishments offered to converts by the Ottoman Sultan, or even out of friendship to a Muslim employer. They realized the error of the renunciation of Christ, and after a long period of penance, usually under the direction of a monastic elder, were finally deemed (by their spiritual father) to be ready to face the trial of martyrdom. They went before the Ottoman authorities, declared their faith in Christ, denounced Islam as a false creed, and went joyously to their execution.
St. Christos the Gardener (or of Constantinople), commemorated by the Orthodox on 12 February comes to mind.
Some of the New Martyrs were Janissaries who had been kidnapped a little too old, and remembered too clearly their life as Christian children.
(Of course there are newer still, the New Martyrs of the Bolshevik Yoke, but their case is not so relevant to the case at hand.)
http://www.martinrothonline.com/MRCC35.htm
Saints in Waiting – the Christian Martyrs of North Korea
Korea has the fourth-highest number of Catholic saints in the world. Why? Because present-day Christianity in Korea – particularly the Catholic stream – was moulded from the blood of its martyrs, thousands and thousands of them. Probably more so than just about anywhere else.
Christians were also at the forefront of the resistance against the Japanese occupation, that ended in 1945, and they helped lead the fight in the 1980s for democracy in their country. Today, Christians comprise about 30% of the South Korean population, and a vibrant Christian expression is everywhere. I have written already about how Korean Christians are making a growing impact on global Christianity.
By contrast, North Korea is once again a land of martyrs.
It is sadly ironic that right after former US President Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – one of his “achievements” being North Korea’s 1994 promise to stop developing nuclear weapons; “kind of like a miracle,” in the ex-president’s words - the North Korean authorities should reveal that they are continuing to develop nuclear weapons. For it was also President Carter who, after meeting North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung, reportedly pronounced him “friendly” towards Christianity.
Well, yes, he was friendly when he thought Christians might help prop up his regime, and garner some international support. That’s why he occasionally sent North Korean “Christian” leaders to travel abroad for international conferences.
My wife is Korean, and about six or seven years ago some North Korean Christians came to Australia for talks. A pastor friend met them.
“They said that North Koreans couldn’t worship any more, because the Americans had bombed and destroyed their churches during the Korean War,” our friend told us. “They also said that North Koreans didn’t really need religion, because they had Kim Il Sung.”
And in a crazy way it was true that North Koreans didn’t need Christianity. After all, they already had the father (the late Great Leader Kim Il Sung), son (the present Dear Leader Kim Jong Il) and spirit (“juche” – the doctrine of self-reliance that supposedly inspires the populace).
Yet Christianity has persisted, even though any friendliness that might have been shown to the faith by Kim Il Sung has not been replicated by his son. He is a tyrant. In the words of the National Association of Evangelicals, in May, North Korea today is "more brutal, more deliberate, more implacable, and more purely genocidal" than any other nation.
As many as 100,000 Christians are in concentration camps, enduring regular torture. Executions are common.
Prisoners unable to contain their horror at executions are deemed disloyal to the party and are punished with electrical shock, often to death. Others are sent into solitary confinement in containers so cramped that their legs become permanently paralysed. Eight Christians working in a prison smelting factory died instantly when molten iron was poured onto them, one by one, for refusing to deny their faith.
Yet something remarkable is happening. A growing number of North Koreans are escaping, to China or South Korea, and many of them are turning to Christianity. There at last they find hope.
So while no decent person in a million years would wish on North Korean Christians their present sufferings, it is possible to see in them the seed of a future renaissance.
German doctor Norbert Vollertsen was stationed in North Korea in 1999-2000 for the relief agency German Emergency Doctors. Later he interviewed hundreds of North Korean refugees in China and South Korea. His message: what has been going on in North Korea for more than half a century bears a strong resemblance to the World War II Nazi genocide against Jews.
“Like the Jews then, Christians in North Korea face their executioners praying and singing hymns," he related. But as the church father Tertullian…said at the dawn of Christianity: "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." Vollertsen, whose reports have made him a legendary figure in Japan and South Korea, found out that as a result of this Communist campaign of persecution an underground church was growing rapidly. "I am sure that once North Korea is free, Christianity will boom there in a way that will even dwarf its growth in the South."
October 25th, 2002
Then came a terrible persecution (from the communists). Later I heard a bishop from China say, sadly, "We have failed. We should have made the people strong for persecution rather than telling them Jesus would come first.'"
Corrie ten Boom
Coming soon to the United States.
It seems to me that Peter (not to mention the other disciples save John) was the first to deny his Christian faith to save his own skin. He later died a martyr for his faith but still originally denied knowing Jesus.
The two girls at Columbine.
How's this truly applicable to Columbine? Apply the commonly understood definitions .....
One who chooses to suffer death rather than renounce religious principles.
or
One who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause, or principle.
One who endures great suffering: a martyr to arthritis.
or
One who makes a great show of suffering in order to arouse sympathy.
relevant article pertaining to North Korea ... what about 2005?
First, is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, His Cost of Discipleship is well worth reading, he understood without a doubt what it meant to follow Christ. Second, is that young girl at Columbine, a 17 year old, who refused to recant her Faith, and last but certainly not least, Jean de Brebeuf who taught an Indidan tribe how to write their language, who was slaughtered by a rival Indian tribe, in the most brutal fashion imaginable.
They poured boiling water over his head in a mock baptism, they hung red-hot tomahawks on him and the other Jesuits martyred along with him. Finally, when he was dead, they cut his heart out and ate it, because they thought they could get a measure of his courage by doing so.
It has always struck me when contemplating the possibility of martyrdom how meagre my Faith would probably reveal itself to be.
He met a young man in Vietnam during our war there, his translator, who was not a Christian when he first began translating Ravi's messages about Christ to the Vietnamese for him, but later he became one.
Ravi came back to North America and for many years had no contact with the man. But one day out of the blue the man called and said he was in San Francisco. He told Ravi this story:
"I was arrested and imprison and tortured to renounce my faith in Jesus Christ. I resisted a very long time. It wasn't just the physical pain, it was the propaganda all day long every day too, saying 'God is dead, where is your God? Why does your God let you suffer like this if He loves you?'And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God,"They wore me down and I decided that I would not pray to this Christian God ever again, this God who did not hear me or answer my prayers. I determined that beginning the very next day I would cease from my regular morning prayers.
"That day they put me on latrine duty. No one wanted such a job. I discovered in the waste bin a piece of paper with words on it, and also human excrement. Because it was in English, and I wished to retain my knowledge of that language, I washed the paper and hid it under my clothes so that I could bring it back to my bed with me for later reading.
"That night I pulled out my flashlight under the cover and the piece of paper. The first thing my eye fell upon was the phrase at the upper right hand corner of the page: Romans 8:28.
"I realized that what I had was the priceless treasure of God's Word, and that He loved me so much that He would not allow even one day to pass without my talking to Him in prayer - for I had prayed that morning as usual; it was the next day that I had vowed to stop praying.
"The next day I prayed to God who so loves me that He would ensure I would have His Word to me when I most needed it, and I never thought of stopping again. I also asked the guards if I could be given latrine duty again, and I ended up doing it every day I was in that camp. Sure enough, every day there was a page from an English Bible there in the waste bin and I rejoiced to wash it and make it mine. I can only guess that some one of the guards had been given or had seized this Bible from some other Christian, and had decided it was only worth using as toilet paper. But it kept me alive.
"Eventually I escaped from this prison and from Vietnam, and so I am here today."
God will provide, dear AlbionGirl!
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