Opposition to our faith causes us to cry out to God for justice, for God to deal not only with personal pain but also with those who perpetuate evil against us. The various authors of the Psalms vent their deepest desires regarding the enemies of God who were also their enemies. In Psalm 83:15, the Psalmist asks God to pursue them with a tempest just as a fire consumes a forest. Or, in Psalm 79, the writer asks God to pour his wrath upon the nations who resist God and who have menaced God’s people. The Psalms recognize that God punished and disciplined Israel for its sin and these writers desired to see the same justice applied to the pagan nations who had defied God.

These hymns appeal to God to set things right, which is his prerogative. In Psalm 64, the Psalmist complains about the threat and conspiracy of the enemy, and how they plot against innocent persons. In verse 7 it says that God will shoot them with arrows. They will be struck down as God takes up the cause and plight of those innocent persons. When we face opposition and injustice our hearts may cry out to God for justice, although not as explicitly as we see in the Psalms. Injustice just doesn’t seem right, but we realize that it is God who can square things.

How do we reconcile this heartfelt desire for things to be just and fair at the same time Christ has told us to love and pray for our enemies? It becomes clear in scripture that, first, we are not to seek vengeance personally but allow God to do it if he chooses; secondly we will still feel the desire for justice even though it may not be our place to right the wrongs; third, we move beyond mere justice to compassionate mercy, seeking to win our enemies so they may experience the grace we have experienced and that they may become brothers and sisters in Christ and escape God’s dreadful judgment (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19: “Do not take revenge but leave a place for God’s wrath”). The perfect example of this attitude is found in Christ as mentioned in I Peter 2:22-23. We do not retaliate, hurl insults, nor threaten anyone who opposes us in the faith. It is God’s grace who helps us under these trying circumstances to act and react in a way that brings honor to God. If we are the recipients of insults for Christ, we are blessed, if we do not retaliate or hurl insults back (I Peter 4:14).

We have the further promise that will make it all worthwhile. Peter says that after we have suffered for a while, Christ will restore us, and make us strong and steadfast once again. All our apparent losses are not really losses if we live in the will of God (I Peter 5:9-10).

How often are we tempted to defend ourselves or seek personal vengeance against those oppose our most sacred beliefs?

You can study more about this in www.vomclassroom.com in the class titled Steadfast Under Fire: Preparing for Persecution under the section titled “Handling Trials and Tribulations: Being Steadfast under Fire.”

Roy Stults, PhD, is the Online Workshop Coordinator and Educational Services Coordinator for The Voice of the Martyrs. He graduated from Olivet Nazarene University (BA and MA), Nazarene Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Doctor of Missiology), and The University of Manchester (England) with a PhD (theology). A Vietnam veteran, Dr. Stults served as a missionary for 19 years and pastored U.S. churches for eight years. Prior to joining VOM, he was a Professor of Religion at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

 

A criticism leveled at Christians is that we are narrow-minded because we believe in one God, the Creator of the material world and also a spiritual realm that is beyond this world. Because we believe in a spiritual realm, we are accused of being superstitious. Belief in the spiritual world and in an unseen God can be a cause for persecution because it challenges the pervading worldview in many places of the world. Our belief put a lot of Christians into prisons in the old Soviet Union, and it continues to do so today in other world areas.

The naturalistic world view is a narrow view of reality which believes that nothing exists outside the material world. This view, they believe, liberates humanity from superstition. It is a closed universe where there is no God to interfere from outside, and it runs on a pure “cause and effect” basis within time and space. Things happen in the world because they are an effect of a prior cause. This cause and effect principle is built into the universe. God is not needed. The naturalistic worldview includes both science (rather scientism, the belief that science alone can discover truth about reality and the universe) and occultism. This seems like a strange combination but both have limited reality to the material world, except in different ways.

The naturalistic view believes in “the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, namely, that everything is a machine” (Schaeffer, He is There and He is not Silent, 63). This is the view of many non-Christian scientists but is also to a certain degree the view of the occult. We assume occultists believe in a separate world of spirits distinct from the material world but, in fact, their ‘spiritual’ realm is merely another dimension of the material world. Magic, for occultists, is the supreme ritual and functions by cause and effect. If you perform the ritual just right (or put the magic potion together exactly as instructed), one can expect certain effects. It is a narrow, confined system of cause and effect, and not an intervention by a spiritual being from outside the material world but from within the spiritual realm of the material world. The gods are of this world. To believe that there is a God distinct from the material world and that he is the Lord of the universe is not an acceptable idea for those who adamantly refuse to believe or bow. Those who deny God and adhere to the naturalistic world view are usually not tolerant of Christians and, if they have power, will use that power to suppress Christian teachings.  Suppression is a form of persecution.

Christians believe that the material world is real but is the result of a supernatural act of God, through Jesus Christ, who holds the world as we know it together. Cause and effect works within a greater reality, where God exists, as do spiritual beings who are outside the material world and are not affected by cause and effect. The Christian view, because it is not narrowly defined by the confines of the material world, is actually broader in scope than the world’s view. We believe that God is free to interact with this world and can suspend cause and effect, working miracles (like allowing Peter on one occasion and Paul on another to be released from jail, raising people from the dead, and allowing Peter to walk on water)!

Totalitarian, godless regimes see the Christian view as regressive (they call us narrow-minded!) and a threat to their desire for total control. If they think the Christian God is beyond their authority, they seek to destroy any semblance of God in their midst. Communists see Christianity as counter-revolutionary; but how can Christian truth be counter-revolutionary when revolutionary thought is based on the narrow, naturalistic view of dialectical materialism, a very narrow, confining box indeed! It is not so revolutionary—it is an intellectual and spiritual prison. This narrow ideology seeks to supplant an open system where God can interact with creation (a belief that allows for true freedom) with a narrow system that restricts freedom to worship the true God. Such a narrow ideology persecutes Christians because Christians will not conform to this belief system, even if it is the belief of those in power. We are seen as incorrigibles because we cannot accept their “progressive” view, because it is actually regressive. They are, in fact, narrow-minded.

Roy Stults, PhD, is the Online Workshop Coordinator and Educational Services Coordinator for The Voice of the Martyrs. He graduated from Olivet Nazarene University (BA and MA), Nazarene Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Doctor of Missiology), and The University of Manchester (England) with a PhD (theology). A Vietnam veteran, Dr. Stults served as a missionary for 19 years and pastored U.S. churches for eight years. Prior to joining VOM, he was a Professor of Religion at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

We have been repeatedly asked about a recently published book called The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, by Candida Moss, professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Notre Dame University. In the book, she asserts that early Christian martyr stories (first three centuries of the church) either were forgeries (“pious fraud”) or that the original stories were edited, rewritten, and altered to fit personal, theological, ecclesiastical, and/or political agendas. She writes that stories of an afterlife for martyrs were invented to protect God’s reputation since God did not come through and save them before death. The stories, she believes, are unreliable at best, obscured by being worked over, or were made-up. “The purpose of this book is to show that the foundations for this idea [that there were legitimate martyrs in the early church] are imaginary,” she writes. They are “inspirational fiction.”

She states that Christians were prosecuted (not persecuted) because Romans saw them as disloyal citizens, not merely because they were Christians. In other words, the Romans did not prosecute them for their faith; Roman emperors were barely aware that Christians existed. She plays a semantic game with her readers at this point: Christians were prosecuted because they were atheistic (putting the public at risk of not receiving the blessings of the gods), anti-social (refusing to participate in pagan feasts that were often immoral), and disloyal (refusing to call the emperor “Lord”). “Just because Christians were prosecuted or executed, even unjustly, does not necessarily mean that they were persecuted,” she writes. “Persecution implies that a certain group is being unfairly targeted for attack and condemnation, usually because of blind hatred.” Christians were a threat to political instability, she claims, and were “uncooperative, stubborn, and difficult.” The problem with her argument is that Christians were seen this way because of their faith and loyalty to Jesus Christ—which is a religious issue with broader implications. They refused to go with the program if it was idolatrous and immoral. They were prosecuted because they were persecuted.

Moss makes bold assertions based on less-than-credible documentation (the thrust of her argument is that what she says is true because she says so) and debunks church fathers like Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin, Tertullian, and the historian Eusebius. She casts negative light upon early Christian writers but speaks positively of the anti-Christian Greek philosopher Celsus and contemporary radical historians like British Marxist historian C.M.E. de Ste. Croix. She uses supposition and insinuation to support her arguments and equates classical hero stories to stories of Christian martyrs (implying that this is where Christians got the idea of martyrdom). “Scholars hypothesize,” she writes, “that this idea of delayed judgment and eschatological reward developed because these promises of immediate reward were constantly unfulfilled [meaning that people died for their faith rather than being blessed]. As a result and in order to avoid the conclusion that God was either notoriously unreliable or fundamentally incompetent, the idea of future eschatological reward and punishment emerged” (47) [Italics mine].

Moss is saying that these ideas emerged to protect the reputation of God! Eusebius was well acquainted with those who were undergoing persecution, but that does not mean he was interested in presenting the facts (216) [Italics mine]! “His portrayal of Christianity as a church of martyrs was strategic. It allowed him to use martyrs to further other claims he wanted to make.” There was, in fact, competition between writers of martyrdom stories (245). She trivializes the stories of martyrs by stating that the gory stories of the deaths of the disciples of Christ were “wildly appealing: they were the campfire stories and bestselling novels of their day” (6). It carried the fictional tradition on from generation to generation, getting gorier until Christians were victorious over Rome (7).

She hits a low point when she says that the Gospel of Mark sought to show Jesus’ “human side.” A little too human according to Moss and also to the great ancient skeptic, the cynical Celsus, whom she introduces as a “well-educated second-century pagan critic of Christianity.” Celsus mocks Christ’s words about asking the Father to let the cup pass from him. Moss comments: “It’s human to die, but to many it seemed a little weak to whine about it ahead of time” (58) [Italics mine].

Although this book does not add to her credibility as a scholar, Moss does make a few valid points that we need to consider:

• Persecution is complex. There may be more than one reason why people are persecuted (e.g., because of their ethnicity, they are perceived as a political threat by totalitarian governments seeking to bring everyone into conformity, or they were born into a minority faith community that the majority will not tolerate).
• Persecution stories should be well documented.
• Some have a “persecution complex” that should not be encouraged. There are those who see everything negative that comes into their lives as persecution caused by their faith. It is a psychological issue based on an unrealistic assessment of the facts.

Reviewed by Roy Stults, Ph.D.

Roy Stults, PhD, is the Online Workshop Coordinator and Educational Services Coordinator for The Voice of the Martyrs. He graduated from Olivet Nazarene University (BA and MA), Nazarene Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Doctor of Missiology), and The University of Manchester (England) with a PhD (theology). A Vietnam veteran, Dr. Stults served as a missionary for 19 years and pastored U.S. churches for eight years. Prior to joining VOM, he was a Professor of Religion at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

We live in a very practical-oriented world. Pragmatism was born in the US—although it is probably that we just gave a name to something that already existed. The main theme of pragmatism “if it works, use it” has opened the door to a lot of good things since the opposite “if it doesn’t work, don’t use it” seems like an obvious truth.

In reality, however, the world is dominated by philosophy that trickles down to the practical level. One of the first uses of philosophy is ideology, when a philosophical perspective becomes a political, religious, or economic system. After discussing the highly theoretical ideas of Whitehead, Oppenheimer, Rousseau, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein, Francis Schaeffer remarks: “these things are not just theoretical in their effect” (He is There and He is not Silent, 53). These philosophies are
changing the world. They have a profound effect upon our daily life even though we are not aware of it.

What people think can work its way into very practical agendas. Karl Marx studied Hegelian Idealism and the end result can now be seen in Marxist revolutionary guerilla movements that are very active in our world today. Some of them are persecuting Christians. We live in a world dominated by ideologies that clash and create tremendous tension in society. Many of these ideologies are contrary to the teachings of Jesus; consequently there is some natural tension between the Christian view and particular ideologies. Some of these ideologies seek to be all-inclusive, believing that everyone should believe their ideology and they will do whatever it takes to bring everyone into their fold. Radical Islam fits in this category. Holding on to our faith and worldview can get us killed in some places.

In the same way, pragmatism can lose sight of moral bounds and appropriate parameters of action when it advocates doing whatever needs to be done to succeed, stepping on human dignity, bypassing justice, and dismissing fairness. It has much in common with the more radical ideologies that desire to conquer the world and ruthlessly endeavor to coerce everyone into their mold. These radical ideologies do not tolerate well the Christian faith, if they tolerate it at all. Christians stand in the way of dominating the minds and hearts of the world. Christians hold Christ as their ultimate loyalty and this is an impediment to radical ideologies that demand total allegiance. North Korea is a perfect example of this intolerance. They have replaced God with their own ideology. This is in reality the essence of the original sin that sought to be autonomous from God. With all their ‘progressive, revolutionary rhetoric,’ they have managed to land back in the Garden of Eden, making the same wrong choice.

For further reading on the subject of philosophy and persecution, go to www.vomclassroom.com and go to the class on “God’s Mission to the World: The Occasion for Persecution—Part 1 Theology of Mission.”

Roy Stults, PhD, is the Online Workshop Coordinator and Educational Services Coordinator for The Voice of the Martyrs. He graduated from Olivet Nazarene University (BA and MA), Nazarene Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Doctor of Missiology), and The University of Manchester (England) with a PhD (theology). A Vietnam veteran, Dr. Stults served as a missionary for 19 years and pastored U.S. churches for eight years. Prior to joining VOM, he was a Professor of Religion at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

 

We all suffer—it is a part of life since the Fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden. Some suffer because of their testimony to their belief in Christ. As long as Christians are silent, there are few repercussions. A holy life may give away your secret, but if you are a silent Christian you may be able to escape rejection and hostility, if that is your goal. If you articulate that Jesus is Lord and not people (even yourself) then the likelihood of rejection is exponentially increased.

In the Western world, we think that because we have individual freedom (which is our highest priority as a culture), any attempt (even by God) to restrain evil is an infringement on freedom. In a culture of political correctness, anyone who deviates from mainstream political or moral positions is not well tolerated. The language of disdain becomes hostile.

For governments who insist on total and ultimate loyalty, Christians who can’t say “Caesar is Lord” are deemed rebellious and insubordinate because they know that their ultimate loyalty is to Jesus Christ as Lord. So they lash out at Christians, seeking to silence them through whatever means are necessary. Dead Christians, these governments think, are no longer a problem.

We will have to choose whether we believe in Jesus as the Lord and we will have to testify to that. Or, we can try to remain safe by being silent and be free from rejection, suffering, and, in some places, death. This is not to disregard that Christians must use discretion in when, where, and how they testify. Even Jesus escaped from hostile crowds and Paul made a swift and careful escape from a hostile city. We do not go looking for suffering or martyrdom but if the occasion arises and a choice has to be made, we will make the hard choice. We may experience beatings, harassment, or legal proceedings for our testimony but we have already decided that if that is the necessary consequence of loyalty to Christ, then we accept that.

In a culture of convenience, like the USA, the idea of suffering for anything is not part of our normal expectations. We go to great ends to end suffering, especially our own. To embrace suffering for Christ is almost a novel idea, but a necessary step to be God’s true servant in our culture.

[For further discussion on this topic see the class on Theology of Persecution and Suffering  found at www.vomclassroom.com.]

Your Turn: Do you struggle to embrace the idea that you may have to suffer for your Christian witness and testimony? What helps you to overcome that struggle?

Roy Stults, PhD, is the Online Workshop Coordinator and Educational Services Coordinator for The Voice of the Martyrs. He graduated from Olivet Nazarene University (BA and MA), Nazarene Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Doctor of Missiology), and The University of Manchester (England) with a PhD (theology). A Vietnam veteran, Dr. Stults served as a missionary for 19 years and pastored U.S. churches for eight years. Prior to joining VOM, he was a Professor of Religion at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

It is hard to conceive that anyone would be against holy living. To be God-like in character, it would seem, would be a benefit to one's family and society. Who could you trust more than a truly God-like person? Of course, we are assuming that we would be like the living God who has revealed himself to us through his Word. Not all "gods" are righteous or trustworthy. The pantheon of gods from ancient times to the present day had no idea of righteousness, goodness, or fairness. Because we know and seek to emulate the character of the living God through Jesus Christ we know perfectly well what righteousness, goodness, and fairness means.

So what is the problem? The Apostle Paul said in 2 Timothy 3:12 that anyone who sought to live a holy life would be persecuted. That seems, on the surface, to be a rash statement. How could anyone persecute a holy person? The problem is not the holy person but the holy God. We represent a God the world rejects. We represent the God many in our society reject. The main reason is that what God represents, primarily in the sense of morality and ethics, appears to restrict the one thing that people of the world wants—autonomous individual freedom without restrictions. The only restrictions that are allowed are what a person decides for him or herself.

There are some further reasons why Christians seeking to live a holy life will be persecuted. They are derived from the desire to live one's life autonomous from God. The holy life is counter-cultural. Cultures by nature try to coerce people to follow its dictates and any deviation from what is culturally approved is subject to correction. Christians resist the "gods" of culture, the ultimate loyalties that everyone in culture bows down to. Power, success, and autonomous individual freedom for the West but it may be group conformity, respect for traditional religions, and total submission to the leader. Another reason is that the holy life causes people who are living the unholy life to feel that they are being judged. It exposes their sins and forces them to deal with aspects of their lives from which they wish to hide. The Holy Spirit is using the holy life to convict people of their sins and they are not happy about that.

It is possible and desirable for people to see the error of their ways and repent and be transformed. If they do not, they may react in a negative way to the holy life and lash out at the Christian. On the personal level, it can be anything from mild resistance to rejection. On the societal level, it may take the form of social disdain and ostracizing, the pressure to conform that may include various forms of coercion like prison, fines, or public humiliation. Governments may carry this resistance to the level of persecution.

The theme of suffering for living a holy life is discussed further in the www.vomclassroom.com class titled Theology of Persecution and Suffering in Module 3. For those who want a deeper understanding of the issues of persecution and suffering, this is a great place to find material that will aid your journey to the deeper life.

Roy Stults, PhD, is the Online Workshop Coordinator and Educational Services Coordinator for The Voice of the Martyrs. He graduated from Olivet Nazarene University (BA and MA), Nazarene Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Doctor of Missiology), and The University of Manchester (England) with a PhD (theology). A Vietnam veteran, Dr. Stults served as a missionary for 19 years and pastored U.S. churches for eight years. Prior to joining VOM, he was a Professor of Religion at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

The Bible teaches that we were created in the image of God, so we have personhood and our personhood reflects the nature of God. We are not only individuals but we also are a part of families and communities. We are designed to live in community because God is like that.

Along with this question is the question of unity and diversity. In what way are we, as humans, unified in our diversity? God is the answer to that question as well. "Without the high order of personal unity and diversity as given in the Trinity, there are no answers" (Francis Schaeffer, He is There and He is not Silent, 14). Our experience in community should be one of mutuality and interaction. We have significant relationships with others from the time of our birth where we learn to be social. In a positive community experience we support each other and build each other up. Jesus said that he and the Father were one—they were distinct but perfectly identified with each other. In theology, the term perichoresis has become popular again. It was first used by the Church Fathers to express the relationship of the Persons of the Triune God. Each Person maintains individuality while sharing in the lives of the other two. It is a fascinating idea. It is more popularly known as the community of being.

This idea of community is apparently behind Paul's description of the church as the body of Christ, where there is a diversity of parts but one body. Each part has its unique, individual function but it works in conjunction with and for the benefit of the other parts. When one part suffers, we all suffer. If one part is honored, we all rejoice.

There are those in the world who will consider our belief in the Trinity heresy, blaspheming and irreverent. They become especially hostile when we declare that Jesus is God, one with the Father. There is an amazing description of who the second Person of the Trinity is in Colossians chapters 1and 2. As wonderful as this passage is we may have to suffer persecution for believing it and witnessing to it. Christ is "the fullness of the Deity in bodily form" and is "the head over every power and authority." Some will be offended by the first phrase and others will contest the second phrase by saying that their power is greater than Jesus. Some are so offended and threatened by these words that they may be willing to kill Christians. It teaches that Christ is God, the Second Person of the Trinity and not just a "teacher" or "prophet." He is the only One to whom we give our ultimate allegiance and loyalty.

That raises the question: "Are you willing to suffer for the Trinity?" It is more than a theological term—it is the truth. It is essential truth that is necessary for a correct understanding of reality. If martyr is defined as someone who will hold the truth in spite of "the assaults of persecution" (Martin Luther) and death, then we are all potential martyrs if we believe in the Trinity. The Trinity is not only worth suffering for but dying for as well.

For more discussion on the Trinity, visit www.vomclassroom.com and check out the information on persecution and its role in the mission of God.

Roy Stults, PhD, is the Online Workshop Coordinator and Educational Services Coordinator for The Voice of the Martyrs. He graduated from Olivet Nazarene University (BA and MA), Nazarene Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Doctor of Missiology), and The University of Manchester (England) with a PhD (theology). A Vietnam veteran, Dr. Stults served as a missionary for 19 years and pastored U.S. churches for eight years. Prior to joining VOM, he was a Professor of Religion at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

Different regions of the world have different histories and also different traditions about freedom, especially freedom of religion. Some areas of the world have never known freedom, or very little of it, so society’s disapproval of people who turn to Christ or witness for Christ is somewhat expected. The idea of “tolerance” is not in their thinking. In Western thought, however, the idea of tolerance is well known, and it sometimes evokes emotion in Christians who believe it indicates turning one’s back on biblical truth.

Let’s look at how the idea of tolerance developed in Western thought and, later, how the understanding of tolerance today can lead to forms of persecution.

Although the Enlightenment (or Age of Reason, 17th and 18th centuries) is seen as a rebellion against the dominance of the church, the Western world continued to enjoy freedom within a pluralistic culture led by Christian values. The rebellion was against the abuses of church and state (often because they were fused together). Therefore, the Enlightenment was an attempt to establish reason as the basis of truth and knowledge, rather than tradition or faith. Faith was tolerated as long as it was not intrusive and was practiced mostly as a private affair.

Tolerance meant that people of diverse viewpoints (including religious) could express their reasoned beliefs (religious or political) and would defend those rights with reason. So the ideal was civil conversation, with the expectation that reasonable people would come to reasonable conclusions in an atmosphere of fair public debate. It was freedom experienced under the umbrella of Christianity.

Recently, however, there has been a radical change in the meaning of tolerance, with the potential of creating hostility toward the Christian faith and Christians. What is being lost is the ongoing and free public debate based on differing viewpoints, and it is being replaced by the public articulation of only what is “politically correct.” It means that society is free to express publicly only what the dominant cultural spokespersons of our culture allow. Much of what is considered politically correct is in opposition to Christian values and morality. This, in effect, restricts freedom of
religion. And the umbrella of freedom is closing.

Postmodernism is somewhat responsible for this shift. Modernism, which came out of and defines the Enlightenment, put forth the idea that we could come to a rational conclusion based on reason and, for the most part, that which is factually based on science. Modernists believed that anyone anywhere who used reason could come to the same conclusion. Modernist thought was intended to supplement faith and superstition as the universal cultural explanation. The Christian faith believes in the universal conclusion and absolute truth of salvation through Christ alone (John 14:6).

Postmodernism, however, rejects the idea of absolute truth, proposing that truth is relative—determined by whatever individuals or communities determine is truth for them. The only way to maintain harmony within such diversity is through tolerance. The problem is that tolerance in this case means no one can make a statement about universal truth. So we are faced with the idea that everyone’s “truth” is equally valid and that we should not try to persuade others that our truth is absolute and theirs is wrong.

When we followers of Christ articulate that Jesus is Lord of all creation and that he is the only way to salvation for all people, we are immediately labeled as intolerant, bigoted, narrow-minded, ignorant and (worst of all in their minds) offensive to postmodern thought. They would tell us that everyone should be able to hold their religious beliefs unchallenged, as long as they don’t assert them. While postmodern thinkers challenge Christian belief, we are not allowed to be offended!

In the Western world, we may not be subject to public scourging or physical persecution. But we will be subject to other forms of persecution that fit our culture—censorship, ridicule and lawsuits that result in fines and other forms of harassment. In the Introductory Class in Persecution Studies on the VOM Classroom website (www.vomclassroom.com), we talk about the various levels of persecution. The first level is disinformation, the second is harassment and the next one is discrimination. It is possible for society to move along through these various levels and escalate into the final one, which is outright persecution.

The questions for us in the Western world are the same ones faced by believers in other parts of the world: How willing are we to fulfill Christ’s mandate as we see our society moving through these levels? How much are we willing to suffer and sacrifice? Are we willing to be obedient to Christ no matter the cost? We may be required to decide sooner than we think. What do you think?

Roy Stults, PhD, is the Online Workshop Coordinator and Educational Services Coordinator for The Voice of the Martyrs. He graduated from Olivet Nazarene University (BA and MA), Nazarene Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Doctor of Missiology), and The University of Manchester (England) with a PhD (theology). A Vietnam veteran, Dr. Stults served as a missionary for 19 years and pastored U.S. churches for eight years. Prior to joining VOM, he was a Professor of Religion at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

It is very appropriate to have an emotional response to persecution. That is how many of us began in ministry to and with the persecuted church. We deeply identify with their pain and loss, and we are driven to help.

As good as that emotional response is, there is more we can do. More than likely, if we have an emotional response to persecution, it will set our bodies in motion to do something. That is the Western way—we are, by and large, 'activists.'

But there is still more we can do. We need to have an intentional, intelligent response to persecution as well. We need to engage the mind to understand the biblical and theological aspects of persecution so we can have a competent and mature understanding not only to be able to articulate this clearly to those who are skeptical but also to approach persecution with wisdom. When the emotions cool and the body gets weary, we will still be engaged in the very important ministry to the persecuted church because we are fully committed to it. We are focused, determined, and relentless in our ministry. That kind of spirit comes with concrete devotion based on a rational choice and is much more than a mere emotional response. It involves an intentional, willful decision based on the realization that it is the will of God and that we are to be about his business.

Be assured that I am not talking about a cold, rational approach that inspires no one. God wants people with long-term passion, fully engaging every aspect of our being to do what he calls us to do.

One way to develop a sound, disciplined mind is to complete one or more of the online courses on VOMClassroom. The site includes material on many aspects of persecution and is ready to help you engage your mind. Courses on the site include history of persecution, preparing for persecution, New Testament studies on persecution, and evangelizing Muslims. Each study is a wonderful resource for you personally and for your church, and they are available at no charge.

These courses are making a difference. Here are comments from current and recent students:

"I recommended the classes…[if] people want to know about Biblical perspective on persecution and learning about history of persecution, they can check your website out."

"VOM classes appear to be so valuable, that they should be offered more widely."

"I am really enjoying the online classes. I'm enrolled in the classes to get more information that may be of use for me in the ministry. I'm also developing a Bible study curriculum for my church's small groups to introduce them to VOM and the persecuted church and a deeper meaning of the cost of following Christ."

As we charge out into the world, we need to be sure that we truly have a sound, disciplined mind capable of being mightily used by God. Developing our minds is a part of being about God's business.

Roy Stults, PhD, is the Online Workshop Coordinator and Educational Services Coordinator for The Voice of the Martyrs. He graduated from Olivet Nazarene University (BA and MA), Nazarene Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Doctor of Missiology), and The University of Manchester (England) with a PhD (theology). A Vietnam veteran, Dr. Stults served as a missionary for 19 years and pastored U.S. churches for eight years. Prior to joining VOM, he was a Professor of Religion at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.