Deep Faith - The Power of Suffering

Christians were fed to beasts, cut down by gladiators. They were covered in tar and used as human torches in Nero’s garden and yet here’s the point that I’m trying to make. The church actually grew and it grew not in spite of persecution but it actually grew because of it. 

Larry Hurtado award winning historian of the early church in his book called Destroyer of Gods argues that it wasn’t Christianity’s relevance and relatability that made Christianity so attractive, but it was exactly the opposite. It was because it was so different. And how were they different? One of the ways they were different is the way they acted amidst the worst of circumstances. That the one thing that would make the church grow faster than anything else in the first century was how other people would treat them and how these Christians would respond in light of it. They not only want to live their life for Jesus, but they considered the most important, the most significant, the most impactful thing they could do was to give their life for Jesus. Listen to the emperor said again - He’s going to be torn to pieces by a lion and he’s happy. The early church father named Tertullian famously said that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”