Christian Capsules: Persecution
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Jermaine Ferrell: Fixing Christianity, one dose at a time. Cue the intro.
Welcome to Christian Capsules. I'm your host, Jermaine Ferrell. And as always, you can contact me at christiancapsules@gmail.com. For premium content, you can go over to our Patreon, which is patreon.com /christiancapsules. And then you can go to our website, which is https://christiancapsules.buzzsprout.com
And again, as always, our scripture is read from the NESB 95 Update Edition. This week's capsule is on Persecution um, so, last week, at the end of the work week, I was driving home and I saw a guy standing [00:01:00] outside, uh, street preaching. And he was preaching the gospel. He only had a mic and a speaker. Oh, and he had a sign, too, that was talking about repent.
And I was only a few miles from where I worked. And I began to think to myself, wow, you know what? This guy is really invigorating. It is nice to see that. But then at the same time, I felt in my head, yikes, because, uh, I knew this guy was going to get persecuted. Eventually, maybe not that day, maybe not that hour, but eventually he was going to suffer some sort of, uh, persecution.
And this reminded me of another, uh, street preacher. His name was Hans Schmidt,
He's 26, and he was shot in the head while preaching in Arizona on November 15th of this year, just last month. And then I started thinking, like, no one's talking about persecution as a Christian now. They're always saying, [00:02:00] there's going to come a time where we're persecuted, or just wait and see when we start getting persecuted, but it's already happening now.
Um, persecution has no timeline, has no start date or end date. As a matter of fact, Jesus talks about this, um, in Matthew, in Matthew chapter 5, verses 11 through 12. He says, Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
And we all know that after Jesus death, the apostles were martyred because of him. Only one apostle did not receive martyrdom, but he was still persecuted nonetheless. So, I want to just go through real quick and talk about the apostles and their martyrdom [00:03:00] and how they died. Peter was crucified in Rome, and upon his request, he was crucified upside down, but, uh, he was crucified in 64 AD by Emperor Nero, who consequently, uh, set his own city, Rome, on fire, and blamed it on the Christians, and Peter happens to be one of the victims of this blame.
This is the same monster who also murdered his mother because the mistress told him to do so. Yeah, Nero was the sick guy.
Andrew, Peter's brother, was crucified as well on the X, the letter X type cross. Um, I think nowadays Catholics call it the St. Andrew's cross. But he was crucified in the great city of Patras around 60 AD.
James, [00:04:00] the first apostle to die as a martyr, who's also the brother of John, was killed by a sword, likely beheaded, on Herod's orders.
John, who was boiled in a cauldron of oil, emerged unharmed, and then was banished to the island of Patmos, to serve on a prison sentence on the island. He didn't die as a martyr, um, and if you think he died, well, 98 A.
D. Philip. There are conflicting stories about how he died. He was either stoned, crucified, Or beheaded around 80 A. D.
Bartholomew, he was flayed alive and then beheaded.
Thomas, we all know him as Doubting Thomas. He was stabbed with a, um, a spear. No, he [00:05:00] was, he was, I'm sorry, he was stabbed with multiple spears, Uh, in 72 A. D. in India.
Matthew, died by a how, halberd. It's like some sort of spear, axe type thing. And then he was later clubbed in 60 A. D.
James was stoned to death.
Jude died by axe after casting out demons.
Simon the Zealot, he died between 61 and 65 A. D. Uh, and I think he had conflicting accounts of martyrdom as well. Some accounts say he was sawed in half, others say he was crucified.
Judas hung himself off a cliff. And then his body fell head first on a field below and his intestines bursted out.
Matthias, who replaced Judas, [00:06:00] has conflicting accounts as well. But he was either beheaded, crucified, or stoned.
Paul, he was beheaded by Nero near the end of 67 AD, three years after Peter.
And then, most recently, in February 2015. Isis slaughters 21 Coptic Christians in Egypt on a Libyan beach bordering the Mediterranean Sea.
Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. And until the next one, I'm Jermaine Ferrell. And I'll talk to you [00:07:00] guys later.