Throughout the nearly two millennia of its existence, the church of Jesus Christ has been no stranger to suffering. The clash of truth with error, of the kingdom of light with the kingdom of darkness, and of the children of God with the children of the devil inevitably results in severe conflict.
Opposition, rejection, ostracism, scorn, contempt, persecution, even martyrdom have been the lot of believers through the centuries.
That the evil world system vents its fury on the church should surprise no one, for that is how it treated the Lord Jesus Christ. Describing the persecution His followers would experience, Jesus pointed out the axiomatic truth, “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master.
It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household!” (Matt. 10:24–25).
Centuries before His birth, Isaiah predicted that Christ would be “despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). The apostle John noted His rejection by the sinful world: “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” (John 1:10–11).
Jesus plainly told the disciples that He was going to suffer and be killed. Matthew 16:21 records that “Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day” (cf. 17:12; Mark 8:31; 9:12; Luke 9:22; 17:25; 22:15; 24:26, 46; Acts 1:3; 3:18; 17:3; 26:23; Heb. 2:10, 18; 5:8; 13:12; 1 Peter 1:11; 2:21, 23; 4:1; 5:1). Unable to attack Jesus after His ascension, the enemies of the truth assaulted His followers.
Stung by its phenomenal growth, the Jewish authorities desperately and futilely tried to stamp out the newly formed church. Acts 4:1–3 records that as [Peter and John] were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to them, being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them and put them in jail until the next day, for it was already evening. The next day the Sanhedrin ordered them to stop preaching in the name of Jesus (4:5–21).
Undaunted, the apostles continued to preach the gospel, and as a result, “the high priest rose up, along with all his associates (that is the sect of the Sadducees), and they were filled with jealousy.
They laid hands on the apostles and put them in a public jail” (5:17–18). Miraculously released from the jail, they went to the temple and resumed preaching the gospel (5:19–25).
Hauled before the Sanhedrin a second time, the apostles were once again ordered to stop preaching in the name of Jesus a threat punctuated this time with a beating (5:26–40). The bold, powerful preacher Stephen faced opposition (6:9–11), arrest, trial before the Sanhedrin (6:12–7:56), and martyrdom (7:57–60). The first persecution aimed at the church as a whole broke out following Stephen’s martyrdom (8:1–4; 9:1–2; 11:19).
It was spearheaded by the young Jewish firebrand, Saul of Tarsus, who would become the apostle Paul. Later the wicked King Herod killed James the brother of John and arrested Peter only to see the latter miraculously freed from jail by an angel (12:1–11). Following his dramatic conversion while enroute to Damascus (9:3–18), Paul, once the church’s most vicious persecutor, became its most zealous missionary.
The Lord set the course of his ministry when He told Ananias, “I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Acts 9:16). And suffer he did, almost from the very moment of his conversion (cf. Acts 9:20–25).
As he traveled throughout the Roman Empire boldly proclaiming the faith he had once tried to destroy (Gal. 1:23), Paul faced continual affliction and unrelenting opposition (Acts 14:5–6, 19–20; 16:16–40; 17:5–9, 13–14, 18, 32; 18:12–17; 19:9, 21–41; 20:3, 22–23; 21:27–36; 23:12–24:9; 25:10–11; 27:1–28:28; cf. 1 Thess. 2:2; 2 Tim. 1:12; 2:9–10; 3:11).
Not surprisingly, suffering is a major theme in his epistles (e.g., Rom. 8:17–18; 2 Cor. 1:5–7; Phil. 1:29; 3:8–10; 1 Thess. 2:14; 2 Thess. 1:5; 2 Tim. 1:8; 2:3). As time went on, the persecution of the church became more organized, widespread, and barbaric.
What began as the isolated acts of the Jewish authorities, or Jewish and Gentile mobs, gradually evolved into the official policy of the Roman government, which saw the refusal of Christians to participate in the state religion as a form of rebellion.
Three centuries of increasingly savage and widespread persecutions culminated early in the fourth century in Emperor Diocletian’s all-out effort to stamp out the church. In a startling reversal of this, Emperor Constantine in A.D. 313, along with the ruler of the eastern part of the Empire, Licinius, issued the edict of Milan, which granted full toleration to the Christian faith
