False accusations and slander can land you in prison, and even lead to death. When Polycarp refused to renounce his Christian faith and to take the oath to the ‘divine’ emperor, a mob of Jews and Gentiles from Smyrna shouted: ‘He is the teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians! He rejects our gods, he teaches the people not to sacrifice and to kneel.’ They wanted him to be thrown to the lions, but that proved to be impossible because the animal feasts were already over. They then shouted that he should be burnt at the stake.1 It is the devil and the powers of darkness that throw people into prison. To that end he uses people and belief systems —Jews, non-Jews, Romans, the Roman Catholic Inquisition, Nazism, Communism, Fascism, radical forms of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam and all kinds of people, both religious and non-religious. The power of darkness were behind the burning at the stake of Servetus by Protestants in Geneva; as well as the I.R.A. and Irish Protestants, the bloodshed between Irish Republican Army and Irish Protestants.
The Bible says: “Then the devil entered into Judas.”2 Hatred can assume demonic traits. Whoever looks at the concentration camps and reads about Auschwitz and the many other death-camps of mass destruction where six million Jews – among whom were 1½ million children – were murdered in a beastly manner, cannot help but acknowledge the existence of the devil and his demons. Whoever studies the fallacy of theories about racial superiority of the preceding decades (fed by evolutionary thinking and propagated by university scholars) will sense demonic influences behind these ideas. The devil is called the murderer from the beginning,3 as well as the father of all lies. The trail of brutality starts with hatred in the heart4 and ends in the greatest atrocities. In Judaism and Christianity it is countered by circumcision of the heart5—true inner conversion.
The word ‘synagogue’ is also used for Christian meetings.6 For Jews and Christians it refers to belonging to the God of Israel. Not just by outward religion, but inward religion. Not just by accepting with your mind certain ‘truths’, but by loving God with all you mind and heart. It is of the greatest importance that a person is a new creation, Galatians 6:15.
Going to prison and suffering are a test-case for true faith and perseverance. The Greek words for tribulation (‘peirasmos’ and ‘thlipsis’) used here are also translated as ‘trial, testing’ in the letter to Philadelphia,7 and is followed here by the word ‘thlipsis’ for ‘trial, tribulation’ from verse nine. Persecution involves trials, tribulation, suffering and pain and one feels the temptation to simply give up and surrender to save one’s skin. Will you be able to withstand it?
How do I know that I will also persevere then? I remember a story about two martyrs in a cell, waiting to be burnt at the stake the following day. One of them had a candle with him, and he tried to hold his finger in the flame. After a few seconds he cried out: ‘I’ll never keep it up!’ Then the other said: ‘What are you doing? Does God ask you hold your finger in a candle flame at this moment? Tomorrow, when the time comes, when you are tested, He will provide what you need so that you can endure it.’8 This is how many martyrs went to their death singing, to the astonishment of the bystanders.
• Some explain the persecution for ten days by pointing to ten periods of persecution of Christians from Emperor Nero (64 AD) to Emperor Diocletian (310 AD). Others point to the very limited length of just ’10 days’ of persecution. This will not go on forever. It will end shortly. Only ten days. There was a literal trial period of ten days for Daniel and his friends.9
• There is a difference between the trials God allows in people’s lives and the temptations that originate from our human flesh.10
• Smyrna, the suffering church, is the only church besides Philadelphia that is only encouraged and praised but not rebuked
Bible References:
1.The Martyrdom of Polycarp 12:2–3 2.John 13:27 3.John 8:44 4.1 John 3:15 and Mark 7:21–22; Acts 9:1; Revelation 9:20–21 5. Romans 2:28–29; Philippians 3:3 6.James 2:2 7.Revelation 3:10 8.1 Corinthians 10:13 9.Daniel 1:12–15 10.James 1:2–5, 13–15, compare James 1:1
