This is not a debate but so far we believe in our faith and religion. The early church suffered a lot more because they were all over spreading the Gospel manually, compared to our digital world and age. If not for their bold and courageous movement, we won’t be here.
The early Christian persecution started with Those who have believed in the one God of heaven and earth have continually been persecuted by rulers and kings since time began. However, when we speak of early Christian persecution, we are referring to the time following Jesus Christ’s suffering and persecution for His Church – His death on the cross. He paid the price for all of our sins, He was spat upon, beaten beyond recognition, humiliated, and finally nailed to a cross like a hardened criminal until He died. After three days, He rose again and even now, He lives and is the right hand of God the Father where He rules and reigns with Him.
How was it that the church underwent such sacrifices? The Roman religion was not intolerant; Rome had accepted into its pantheon deities from the Italian tribes and from Asia Minor. In the provinces, the great territorial gods—such as Saturn in North Africa and Jehovah among the Jews—were accepted as “legal religion” on the grounds that their rites, even if barbarous, were sanctified by ancient tradition.
Countless local gods and goddesses, worshiped by the ordinary inhabitants of the Greco-Roman world, were often provided with a classical equivalent name and worshiped as “Roman” deities.
Despite this toleration, by the early second century the Roman governor of Bithynia (on the Black Sea) had no hesitation in sending to immediate execution those who had been denounced as being Christians. The name alone was a sufficient death warrant.
Reasons for the persecution emerge from the record of Christianity’s first three centuries.
So back to the topic of the day according to Christian Headlines, When you think of the worst time in history for Christian persecution, perhaps you think of the Roman Coliseum or the Middle Ages and Reformation when Christians were burned at the stake for translating the Bible into the common language.
There are countless time periods in history when Christians have faced persecution for their faith. Jesus warned that persecution would come (John 15:20). We know this as Christians.
What may surprise you, however, (especially if you are a Christian living in the West), is that a new report has shown that Christian persecution is actually worse today than ever before in history.
According to Relevant Magazine, this report comes from Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic persecution charity that “provides pastoral and humanitarian assistance to the persecuted Church around the world.”
This increase in Christian persecution is in large part due to terrorist groups like ISIS in the Middle East and Boko Haram in Nigeria. These groups particularly target Christians.
Of the 13 countries where Christian persecution has been most severe, none of them have shown improvement in the past year except Saudi Arabia, where, the report says, “the situation was already so bad, it could scarcely get worse.”
Persecuted Christians from Iran to Indonesia to North Korea often feel forgotten by those in the West, especially because Western governments are not doing enough to provide them with aid.
David Curry, the CEO of Open Doors, another Christian persecution charity that releases an annual World Watch List of countries where Christian persecution is most severe, offered some hope in this situation: “One of the reasons we call ourselves Open Doors is we fundamentally think there are no doors closed to Jesus, and we know that the Church is everywhere. The body of Christ is everywhere. So we’re going to tackle them. There are no off-limits places to us.”
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