‘For it has been granted
to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for
him…’ (Phil. 1:29)
As I have mentioned previously, the outpouring of
the Holy Spirit at Pentecost ignited a massive spiritual war between the kingdom
of God and the dominion of darkness in this world, and this battle is still ongoing
today. Satan wants to keep people in
spiritual blindness and bondage to sin, whereas the Holy Spirit seeks to set
people free from Satan’s power and to bring them into the caring authority of the
kingdom of God. So Satan will always oppose
the openly preached message and demonstrated power of the kingdom of God, and
he will use non-believers in the social, political and economic structures of
this world to do this. Wherever
the gospel of the kingdom of God is preached in power, Satan gets aroused in anger,
rage and fury. Hence
he stirs up opposition towards (and even outright persecution of) Christian leaders
and the church community, expressing his anger and rage through any human
channels that he can use.
Apart from the kind of opposition from individuals
here and there which any believer can experience, there were three main sources
of persecution against these early Christians:
·
The religious system. Religious systems generally have a two-fold
vested interest in maintaining the status
quo. Firstly, they don’t want to lose
the influence and control that they exercise over their adherents, by seeing
them convert to the Christian faith, and, secondly, they have their own inherent
financial self-interest: if they lose their adherents, then their source of
income is affected.
In the book of Acts, the
hearts of the Jews were filled with jealousy, envy, insecurity and unbelief in
the face of the growing early Christian faith. It was out of envy that the Pharisees had
delivered Jesus to Pilate (Matt. 27:18), and this deep-rooted sin in the hearts
of religious Jews was exposed by the early church’s success in gaining converts
and the attention of the masses. Furthermore,
the message that Jesus is the Son of God and the promised Messiah added a theological
dimension into this mix, a dimension which the Jews could not understand and therefore
could not accept. The truth that Jesus is
the Son of God was what propelled the Sanhedrin to seek to have Jesus crucified
(Matt. 26:63-66).
·
The governing authorities. After the Jewish religious authorities rose up
against the new and growing Christian faith, the Jewish governing authorities then
followed suit. King Herod had James put to
death, and then seized Peter with the intention of putting him on trial and
having him killed as well. However, Herod’s
attempt to persecute the Christian community ultimately resulted in his own demise
(Acts ch.12).
The Christian faith was,
of course, also persecuted intermittently and cruelly by the Roman authorities
at a later stage (cf. Rev. 2:8-11). This
began during the reign of the Emperor Nero, and Paul himself was executed at that
time (cf. 2 Tim. 4:6-18). The Christian message
that Jesus is Lord over all, including over Caesar, was too much for the Roman
authorities, since it raised the issue of people’s ultimate allegiance and thereby
challenged the social, political and religious structures of the day.
·
Those whose financial self-interest was touched. When Paul cast the unclean spirit out of the
slave girl in Philippi, it caused her owners to lose their source of income. In their anger, these men then stirred up persecution
against Paul and Silas (16:16-24). Similarly,
the success of Paul’s ministry in Ephesus evidently caused problems with those
who made shrines for the worship of the false goddess Diana-Artemis. They were losing their business and the worship
of this false goddess was being affected, as people turned to Christ, so they
stirred up a riot against Paul and his co-labourers (19:23-41).
These persecutions against the early Christians
were very real. Many believers suffered
hardship and imprisonment. Many were
killed or saw their family members killed.
Becoming a believer in the early church meant that a person understood
that they were embracing potential persecution and suffering for the sake of
Christ. However, the spiritual power and
deep grace of the revival which was released at Pentecost sustained them through
the difficulties that persecution caused. In fact, persecution led to the geographical expansion
and growth of the church and made it stronger.
As Tertullian observed much later, the blood of the martyrs became the seed
of the church.
What helped these early believers not only to
persevere in the faith, but also to overcome and continue to preach the gospel regardless
of what they suffered, can be summed up in the following points:
·
They were filled with the Holy Spirit, and the word
of God was like fire in their bones (cf. Jer. 20:9, 23:29). Their experience of God’s presence, grace and
power worked at a deeper level within their hearts than even suffering and hardship
could touch, demonstrating that their faith was real and genuine. They loved Jesus more than their life in this
world (1 Peter 1:6-9).
·
They accepted that suffering for the sake of Christ
was part and parcel of their calling in making him known (9:15-16, Phil. 1:29). It went with the territory.
·
They were surrendered totally to Jesus and were willing
to risk and even lay their lives down for him, if this became necessary (7:54-60,
15:26; Rev. 12:11). They denied themselves
and took up their cross in following him.
They did not seek to save their own lives (Matt. 16:24-27).
·
They did not allow suffering to prevent them from
preaching that Jesus Christ was exalted and is Lord over all, and that God’s
salvation is found only in and through him (4:12,18-20; 5:42).
·
They were not ashamed of Jesus or of the gospel message
that had changed their lives so radically. On the contrary, they rejoiced that they were worthy
to suffer shame for him (5:41, Rom. 1:16).
It was not long after Pentecost before persecution
broke out against the leaders of the new Christian community in Jerusalem. After the healing of the man crippled from
birth and the apostles’ powerful preaching, the Jewish priests were greatly
disturbed. They arrested Peter and John and
had them thrown in prison. After
threatening them the next day and insisting that they no longer speak or teach in
the name of Jesus, the Sanhedrin released them.
However, the apostles refused to keep quiet and simply kept on preaching. They had to obey God, rather than men. God later affirmed his presence with them by
causing the very building in which they were praying to shake (3:1 – 4:31).
However, their peace did not last very long. Their continuing success in gaining many converts
and seeing many people healed, filled the members of the Sanhedrin with jealousy. Again, they had the apostles arrested and thrown
in prison. However, this time the apostles
were released miraculously during the night by an angel and they carried on preaching
the next day in the temple courts. So they
were arrested yet again and tried before the Sanhedrin. Peter’s message to them stirred up their fury,
and the apostles were flogged, warned and released, but again they simply
continued preaching day after day (5:12-42).
Nothing could stop them!
It was Stephen who became the first Christian martyr. His preaching and healing ministry brought
him into conflict with the Jews, and so he too was hauled before the Sanhedrin and
false witnesses were produced to speak against him. His message made them furious, and they dragged
him out of the city and stoned him to death (6:8 – 7:60). On that day, a great persecution broke out against
the Christians in Jerusalem, scattering many of them away into other places. Saul was the main leader of this persecution and
he began to destroy the church, putting many men and women in prison (8:1-3,
9:1-2). However, this persecution simply
meant that those who were scattered carried on preaching the gospel wherever
they went in the surrounding regions, resulting in revival breaking out in Samaria
and later in Antioch too (8:4-8,25-40; 11:19-26).
After his powerful conversion on the Damascus road
and his filling with the Holy Spirit, Saul/Paul immediately began to preach the
gospel in Damascus, and as a result he himself now found his own life in danger
from the Jews. He had to escape furtively
during the night from Damascus and then later also from Jerusalem (9:20-30). Paul’s apostolic ministry was bathed almost
continually in opposition, suffering and persecution (cf. 9:15-16). He describes himself and his co-workers as being
brutally treated, persecuted, slandered and treated as the scum of the earth;
as hard pressed on every side and as always being given over to death for Jesus’
sake; as being in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments
and riots; in dishonour and bad report; and as being flogged, beaten and stoned
(1 Cor. 4:11-13; 2 Cor. 4:8-11, 6:4-10, 11:23-27). The power of God that was released through his
ministry stirred up the devil big time wherever Paul went!
Paul’s
greatest ongoing problem was the attacks he received from the Jews (cf. 1 Thess. 2:14-16). Wherever he went, groups of Jews invariably rose
up, opposed him and spoke evil against him.
They stirred up trouble in order to hinder and silence him. His ministry model of ‘to the Jew first, and
then to the Gentile’ meant that, when he arrived in a town, he would go first to
the synagogue and try to preach the gospel to the local Jews, and only then
would he turn to the Gentiles. His success
in drawing small groups of Jews to Christ in these synagogues, and then his success
among the Gentiles, caused the other Jews to become jealous, and they rose up
against him wherever he went. However,
he also saw demonstrations of the power of God which would have encouraged him
in this ministry. His early encounter with
Elymas in Cyprus was a case in point (13:6-12).
In Pisidian
Antioch, Paul won many converts to Christ from among the Jews in the synagogue,
and the next week almost the entire city gathered to hear him. The Jews were then filled with jealousy and
spoke against him abusively. They
incited the city’s leaders against Paul and Barnabas and had them expelled from
the region (13:42-50). In Iconium and Lystra
it was a similar story. In Iconium, the Jews
who refused to believe poisoned the minds of the Gentiles against Paul and Barnabas,
and, after their powerful ministry had influenced opinion in the whole city,
these Jews conspired with some of the Gentiles to stone them. So Paul and Barnabas were obliged to flee. In Lystra, some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium,
and they won the crowd over. Paul was dragged
outside the city, stoned and left for dead, but appears to have been miraculously
healed as a result of the prayers of the brethren (14:1-20).
In his ministry in Philippi,
Paul exorcised an evil spirit from a slave girl. When her owners realised that they had lost their
source of income, they dragged Paul and Silas before the local magistrates on a
trumped-up false charge. This won the
crowd over, and Paul and Silas were stripped, beaten, severely flogged, and then
thrown into prison. However, as they persevered
and praised God at midnight in spite of their suffering, God answered them mightily
and caused a violent earthquake to shake the whole place. All the doors flew open and everyone’s chains
fell off! This overt demonstration of the
power of God sparked the conversion of the jailer and his whole family (16:12-40).
In Thessalonica, Paul and Silas’ ministry gained fruit
among both Jews and Gentiles, but, in their jealousy, the unbelieving Jews rounded
up a mob and started a riot, maligning and misrepresenting the apostles’
message. So the new believers sent Paul
and Silas away secretly by night. However, the Jews then followed them to Berea,
agitating and stirring up the crowds again.
For his own safety, Paul was escorted away and accompanied all the way
to Athens (17:1-15). It was a similar
story in Corinth. The Jews became abusive
and opposed Paul. They made a united attack
on him and had him brought to court before Gallio the proconsul, but their
charges were dismissed (18:5-17).
Of his
ministry at Ephesus, Paul later described himself as having ‘fought with wild
beasts’ (1 Cor. 15:32). His ministry
here was so powerful and successful that it eventually resulted in a great disturbance,
brought about by Demetrius and his fellow-tradesmen out of their financial self-interest. Demetrius’ business of making silver shrines
for the worship of the false goddess Diana-Artemis was losing money, because so
many people were converting to the new Christian faith. Their fury against Paul and his co-workers
caused a riot in the city centre (ch.19).
Paul’s final visit to Jerusalem again stirred up the
Jews, and they caused an uproar in the whole city. This led to his trial before the Sanhedrin and
a plot to kill him, and then to his hearings before Felix, Festus and Agrippa,
before he appealed to Caesar and was sent to Rome (21:17 – 26:32).
The Chinese house-church movement
‘I tell you the truth, unless
a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’ (John
12:24-25)
In 1949, when the Communists took over China,
there were slightly less than one million evangelical Christians in the country. This was the fruit of the dedicated and sacrificial
work of foreign missionaries since the mid-1800s, and of the ministries of Chinese
national leaders whom God had raised up, such as Pastor Hsi and others. Believers in South China experienced revival
in 1907-1911, and the ministries of men such as John Sung, Andrew Gih and Watchman
Nee, in particular, impacted Chinese evangelical Christianity and brought about
sustained growth.
After the Communists had expelled all foreign missionaries
in the 1950s, they began a systematic and brutal persecution against the different
Christian denominations, under the guise that Christianity was a foreign religion. Many leaders and believers were imprisoned
and tortured, or sent to forced-labour camps, and many were killed. Most church buildings were closed down, but in
the larger cities some were kept open in order to deceive foreign visitors that
there was religious freedom in China.
People under the age of 18 were not allowed to attend church. Bibles were confiscated, burned and banned, and
adherents were required to attend the official government-controlled three-self
churches. Christians were treated as second-class
citizens and allowed to do only menial work.
They could not go to university. The
situation seemed so bleak that many foreign observers believed that Christianity
in China had been decimated beyond hope of survival.
However, God had other plans. It was in these hardest times that revival
broke out and began to spread through the country during the 1960s. The testimonies of such people as Mama Kwong and
Brother Yun give us glimpses into what happened as the Holy Spirit moved and worked
powerfully, and believers preached courageously.[1] Countless thousands of people were converted,
often with whole villages turning to Christ.
The new believers began to hold meetings in homes
and outside in secret places, often late in the evening, giving birth to what became
known as the Chinese house-church movement.
Although this movement remained unregistered and therefore was officially
banned by the Chinese authorities, yet believers continued to meet. The gospel was preached powerfully, and the Holy
Spirit worked through visions and dreams, and through healings and exorcisms, just
as in the book of Acts. Meetings would
often last for hours. Discipleship groups
would be held in secret to build up new believers in the faith. When people received Christ, they understood that
this meant a potential prison sentence or an early death. When meetings were discovered by the secret police,
believers and especially leaders were imprisoned and/or sent to labour camps. They were tortured and many died. However, through the courageous witness of many
of these believers, their fellow prisoners often found Christ. The house-churches continued to flourish, grow
and spread. They were often led by women,
because so many of the pastors and leaders had been imprisoned.
This revival continued powerfully through the
1970s and 1980s, and many commentators believe it to be the greatest revival in
the history of Christianity. Today the number
of Chinese Christians of all denominations is estimated to be around 100 million. The majority of these are evangelicals, and
the house-churches are still growing. All
of this happened without the influence of resident foreign missionaries and (initially)
with few Bibles available, and in a country which during this period was closed
to the outside world and was brutally repressive of open expressions of religious
faith. In what seemed to be the darkest times,
God worked most powerfully! The church in
China not only survived this brutal persecution, but, as has been proven many times
through history, it also thrived and grew.
Copyright Notice
THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973,
1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
[1] See Whittaker, C. Great Revivals, Chapter 15, “The China Miracle”,
Basingstoke: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1984, pp.148-156, and Yun, Brother and
Hathaway, P. The Heavenly Man, London:
Monarch, 2002.
