10 Sermon Illustrations on Persecution Faith

If you will allow me an expression, Satan got a match when he got Paul. He tried to get him away from God, but he never switched off. Look how they tortured him. Look how they stripped and beat him. Not only did the Romans do this, but the Jews also. How the Jews tried to drag him from his high calling. How they stripped him and laid upon the back of the apostle blow after blow. And you know that the scourge in those days was no light thing. Sometimes men died under that punishment. If one of us got one of the stripes that Paul got, how the papers would talk about it. But it was nothing to Paul. He just looked at it as if it were a trivial thing--as if it were a light affliction. When he was stripped and scourged by his persecutors you might have gone and asked him: "Well, Paul, what are you going to do now?" "Why, press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus;" Take your stand before Him and ask him as they bring the rod down upon his head, "What are you going to do now, Paul?" "Do? I am going to press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." He had one idea, and that was it. Look at him as they stoned him. The Jews took up great stones to throw upon the great apostle. They left him for dead, and I suppose he was dead, but God raised him up. Come up and look at him all bruised and bleeding as he lies. "Well, Paul, you've had a narrow escape this time. Don't you think you had better give up? Go off into Arabia and rest for six weeks. What will you do if you remain here? They mean to kill you." "Do!" he cries as he raises himself like a mighty giant, "I am going to press toward the mark of the high calling of God." And he goes forth and preaches the gospel. I am ashamed of Christianity in the nineteenth century when I think of those early Christians. Why, it would take all the Christians in the Northwest to make one Paul. Look at his heroism everywhere he went. Talk about your Alexanders; why, the mighty power of God rested upon Paul. "Why," said he, "thrice was I shipwrecked while going off to preach the gospel." What did he care about that? Cold churches wouldn't trouble him, although they trouble us. What would lying elders and false deacons be to him? That wouldn't stop him. He had but one idea, and over all obstacles he triumphed for that one idea. Look at him as he comes back from his punishment. He goes up some side street and gets lodgings. He works during the day and preaches at night on the street. He had no building like this, no committee to wait on him, no carriage to carry him from the meeting, no one to be waiting to pay his board bills. There he was toiling and preaching, and, after preaching for eighteen months, they say, "We'll have to pay you for all this preaching, Paul," and they take him to the corner of the street and pay him with thirty-nine stripes! That is the way they paid him. Oh, my friends, when you look at the lives of such men don't it make you feel ashamed of yourselves. I confess I feel like hanging my head. Go to him in the Philippian jail and ask him what he is going to do now. "Do? press forward for the mark of my high calling." And so he went on looking toward one point, and no man could stand before him.

The minister of the seminary at Clermont, France, having been seized at Autun by the populace, the mayor, who wished to save him, advised him not to take the oath, but to allow him to tell the people that he had taken it. "I would myself make known your falsehood to the people," replied the clergyman: "it is not permitted me to ransom my life by a lie. The God who prohibits my taking this oath will not allow me to make it believed that I have taken it." The mayor was silent, and the minister was martyred.

During the revolution in France, the Ban de la Roche (a mountainous canton in the northeast of that kingdom) alone seemed to be an asylum of peace in the midst of war and carnage. Though every kind of worship was interdicted throughout France, and almost all the clergy of Alsace, men of learning, talents, and property, were imprisoned,—John Frederic Oberlin, pastor of Waldbach, was allowed to continue his work of benevolence and instruction unmolested. His house became the retreat of many individuals of different religious persuasions, and of distinguished rank, who fled thither, under the influence of terror, from Strasburg and its environs, and who always received the most open-hearted and cordial reception, though it endangered his own situation. "I once," says a gentleman, who was then residing at Waldbach, "saw a chief actor of the revolution in Oberlin's house, and in that atmosphere he seemed to have lost his sanguinary disposition, and to have exchanged the fierceness of the tiger for the gentleness of the lamb.

The Rev. Mr. Symes, a Christian missionary in India, baptized a soldier who had been a noted prizefighter, eminent in the ring in England, a powerful, lion-looking, lion-hearted man. With one blow he could level a strong man to the ground. He was the terror of many in the regiment. That man, to use his own phrase, "sauntered into Mr. Symes's chapel," and heard the gospel, and was alarmed. He returned again and again, and a last light broke in upon his mind, and he became a new creature. The change in such a character was, of course, marked and decisive: the lion was changed into a lamb. Two months after that, in the mess-room, some of those who stood in awe of him before, began to ridicule him. One of them said, "I'll put it to the test whether he is a Christian or not;" and taking a basin of hot soup, he threw it into his breast. The whole company gazed, in breathless silence, expecting that the lion would have started up, and murdered him on the spot; but, after he had torn open his waistcoat, and wiped his scalded breast, he calmly turned round, and said, "This is what I must expect: if I become a Christian, I must suffer persecution." His comrades were filled with astonishment.

Negrino and Paschali exercised their ministry in Calabria, in comforting the persecuted Waldensians among the woods and mountains. But when the sufferers were closely hunted, the preachers were not likely to escape. At the instance of the inquisitor, they were both apprehended. Negrino was starved to death in prison at Cosenza. At this place Paschali was detained in confinement eight months, whence he was sent prisoner to Naples, with a view of being conducted to Rome. The patience with which he endured the cross, appears from the sensible and ardent letters which he addressed to the persecuted church of Calabria, to his afflicted spouse Camilla, and to the church of Geneva. In one of these he thus describes his journey from Cosenza to Naples:

"Two of our companions had been prevailed on to recant; but they were no better treated on that account, and we know not what they will suffer at Rome, whither they are to be conveyed, as well as Marquet and myself. The Spaniard, our conductor, wished us to give him money to be relieved from the chain by which we were bound to one another; yet, in addition to this, he put on me a pair of handcuffs, so strait that they entered into the flesh, and deprived me of all sleep; and I found that, if at all, he would not remove them until he had drawn from me all the money I had, amounting only to two ducats, which I needed for my support. At night, the beasts were better treated than we, for their litter was spread for them, while we were obliged to lie on the hard ground, without any covering; and in this condition we remained for nine nights. On our arrival at Naples we were thrust into a cell, noisome in the highest degree, from the damp, and the putrid breath of the prisoners."

He was next sent in boxes to Rome, at which place his brother arrived from Coni, with letters of recommendation, to ask his liberty. With difficulty this brother obtained an interview with him, in the presence of a judge of the Inquisition. He gives the following description of this first interview:

"It was hideous to see him, with his bare head, and his hands and arms lacerated with the small cords with which he was bound, like one to be led to the gibbet. On advancing to embrace him, I sunk to the ground. 'My brother,' said he, 'if you are a Christian, why do you distress yourself thus? Do you know that a leaf cannot fall to the ground without the will of God? Comfort yourself in Christ Jesus, for the present troubles are not to be compared with the glory to come.'"

At last, on the 8th of September, 1560, he was led to the conventual church of Minerva, to hear his process publicly read; and the next day, the 9th of September, he appeared, with the greatest fortitude, in the court adjoining the castle of St. Angelo, where he was burnt in the presence of the pope and a party of cardinals.