|
Experts believe that Adam was created around 6,000 years ago. During the span from Adam's creation to the present, there have been windows. Windows of lives, families, social systems, and kingdoms. Windows of love, grief, romance, joy, and pain. Windows of opportunity, failure, and success. Windows of dreams, aspirations, hope, and struggle. If one could gather all the peoples of the earth together to pose for snapshots during these windows of time, one would come to the realization that, every 120 years or so, whole civilizations are completely replaced by new civilizations. In that collection of snapshots, you would see all the people that have ever lived on our planet. Each, during their particular window. All of those people are gone, now. Those windows of time have passed. Whatever they contributed to the human cause is forever history.
On each Memorial Day, our churches conduct services across the country to pay tribute to men and women who, during their window here on earth, were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for a great cause, and they are worthy of such honor. It boggles the mind to think that someone was willing to die for my freedom, people I've never known and that never knew me. Yet they died so that the cause of freedom could be advanced that we enjoy, today.
During those services, I've often thought of a different kind of soldier that was willing to give it all, the Christians who went before us and who, too, were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in order for the cause of Christ to be furthered. Those who were willing to die so that I could someday hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. What it means to be a Christian was really brought home to me one day as I read this account in Hebrews of the martyrs of Christianity. I came to realize that I belonged to a band of brothers - brothers in Christ. I was part of a continuation of a blood-stained cause for which those before me gave their all. I was one with them. I owe them a debt of unending gratitude for their willingness to lay it all down for me. And, now, I was part of the work that they had died for. Would I be willing to die so that someone 100 years from today could hear the gospel of Jesus Christ? Would I be willing to suffer as they suffered for so that someone else might live? And suffer, they did.
Many of us have read in Foxe's Book of Martyrs how the great men mentioned in scripture were killed for their witness. Paul, James, and Matthias, were beheaded. Peter was crucified upside down (at his request because he deemed himself unworthy to be crucified as was his Lord). Philip, Jude, Bartholomew, and Andrew were crucified. Matthias was beheaded, Mark was dragged to death, Thomas was killed with a spear, and Luke was hanged. Yet, there are untold thousands of unknown saints that gave their lives for the cause of Christ.
Ignorance was behind some of their deaths. They were blamed for earthquakes, wars, bad weather, famine, and disease because they would not bow down to the country's pagan gods. They were accused of cannibalism because they were thought to eat human flesh when they partook of communion. They were accused of incest because it wasn't understood by the ignorant what it meant to be brothers and sisters in Christ. They were the scourge of the earth and victims of great disdain.
Other martyrdoms were motivated by raging hate. Many of the horrors visited upon the martyrs of Christianity are too grisly to print in this article. The vehement hatred they endured is reflected in the manner in which they were massacred. No death was too violent. The wrath of hell crushed them for daring to uphold the cross of Calvary. Yet they gladly endured such miserable deaths to further a cause of which we are, now, the beneficiary.
Men and women were burned at the stake while their families were forced to watch, helpless to offer any assistance as their loved one screamed in agony. Their bodies slowly burned away while their lips were mouthing praises to their Lord and Savior, hands raised to the heavens in honor of their God. No method of death was considered too heinous for something so vile as a Christian. They were covered in wax and used as human torches. They were sewn into animal skins and torn apart by wild dogs. They were roasted on red-hot iron chairs and had smoldering plates of iron placed on them. They were pulled apart by stretching, cast into rivers, tossed on the horns of bulls, dragged by horses, beaten mercilessly, strangled, and starved to death. The writer of Hebrews got it right when he declared the world unworthy of such a people.
Their deaths were sporting events to the onlookers. The desecration of the bodies after death is evidence of the rage behind such brutality. The dead corpses of loving and gentle Christians were piled up in the streets. Men, women, children, so despised that no one bothered to honor them by even the least dignity of burial. Many were beheaded and their heads set upon the city gates. They were deemed unworthy of proper disposal. The bodies of many of those that were buried were stolen from their graves and mutilated
This is what it has meant to be a Christian in the past. Still, today, in many countries, it means certain and brutal death to be called by the name of Christ. We owe a huge debt of reverence to those brothers and sisters who have gone on before. By claiming the name of Christ, ourselves, we become part of a storied and brutal cause.
Some day, our particular window of time will close. Some day, every person alive today will be gone. Whatever we contribute will become part of man's history. We may never be asked to give the ultimate sacrifice. Then again, we may. One just never knows how quickly things can turn. The realization that I am linked to such a people really impacts me when I read of the Christians that went before me. A brotherhood of Christians for which the founder of our cause was willing to lay his life down, too.
It means something to be a Christian.
|
|
