Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world

Christian Meditations – A Chris Hansen Column

February 15, 2008

You met Chris, now you can read more of his work:

Courage Of The Ancient Ones – Part 5

                    by

                     Chris Hansen

Author of:

“Secret of the Psalms,”

Amazingly accurate prophecies about Jesus written centuries in advance.

“Revelation Revisited,”

John is under arrest by the Roman empire.  While he is in exile, he gets the surprise of his life!  The glorified Jesus shows up!  John’s story is redramatized for today’s audience who may not be familiar with the Bible.

“Grandfather’s Journal.”

A touching illustrated book for children and adults.  A young boy who is terrified of death and bored with church reads his grandfather’s last journal entries.  The boy discovers the sweet hope that the resurrection of Jesus provides.  The boy learns to “Smile on the inside too.”

www.xlibris.com and local bookstores and 1-888-795-4274

This series of short stories looks back at some very courageous Christians.  These Christians were far more than mere footnotes in church history.  They were real people with incredible courage in the face of unspeakable brutality!  This kind of courage needs to be remembered and emulated.  This kind of brutality, though unspeakable, needs to be spoken.  They were and still are our brothers and our sisters in Christ.  They are a great cloud of witnesses who surround us and encourage us to finish our race.  May their great courage be ours too.  May God help us to be heroes too.  The world still needs heroes like them.  These stories are based on historical records left to us by Eusebius.  Where appropriate a certain amount of imagination is used.  Even so, the basic facts are definitely nonfiction!

 In part 4, John rescued a beloved student from a life of crime, and lived to tell his experience.  Now, the conflict between an elder statesman, named Polycarp, and the Roman Empire.  Caesar insisted on being worshiped as a god.  Polycarp and his small flock insisted on worshiping the God of their fathers.  Caesar would not allow Jesus or anyone else to be worshiped as Lord.  So, the conflict begins to build.

          Refined In The Fire

                 It was a turbulent time in the Roman Empire.  A thousand peoples prayed in a thousand tongues to a thousand gods!  The ancient Jews and these new Christians insisted on the worship of just one God!  Why did they have to be so stubborn and unbending?   It was a very dark time for the young Christian church.  Peter was hated by many, but not all Jews because he dared to teach that Jesus was superior to Moses!  The Romans hated Peter because he taught that Jesus and not Caesar was Lord!  The Greeks, though not all, hated Peter because he dared to teach that all their gods were false gods!  The Romans intended to break Peter’s heart just before breaking his body.  Peter was forced to watch as the authorities began to kill his own wife!  As she was dying she pleaded with him not to turn away from Jesus.  Then Peter was sentenced to be crucified.  In a final display of humility Peter requested that he be crucified upside down since he considered himself not worthy of dying in the same way his Lord had died.  The Romans granted him his request, which may have prolonged Peter’s agonies.  He died very painfully and very slowly over a two-day period!  With what strength he possessed, Peter proclaimed Jesus as Savior as he slowly died!

Simeon, the son of Cleopas was tortured for many days.  When they could not break him, they finally crucified him! 

Ignacius knew that he would soon die.  He knew the blessed Polycarp during his early ministry in Smyrna.  Rome could always count on Smyrna.  They were a loyal colony.  Many had come to Christ in that beautiful city.  These too demonstrated that same kind of loyalty to Christ.  Smyrna has a beautiful lake which, when the waters were quite still, would perfectly mirror the face of anyone who looked into that beautiful water.  The saints in Smyrna reflected the love of Christ in this very same way. 

Ignacius was in Smyrna when he wrote one of his final letters.  Ignacius knew his days were numbered.  He wrote a letter to Onesimus, the pastor of Ephesus.  This may well be the very Onesimus Paul rescued from harsh physical and spiritual slavery.  (Philemon.)  Ephesus was known for its 56,000-seat stadium where Christians were routinely crucified as people sat about and ate sumptuously!  Victims who died too slowly on their crosses were eaten by bears while people ate their noonday meal!  The hungry bears would tear living victims from their crosses chunk by chunk, and still the people socialized and waited for the more exciting games to come later that afternoon!

Ignacius sent a number of letters to his friends as he journeyed to his execution.  He would write a letter, and then hand it to a devoted friend as they met on the roadside.  In one letter to the Romans he wrote: “All the way from Syria to Rome, I am fighting with wild animals, on land and sea, by night and day; Fettered to ten leopards, (referring to a squad of Roman soldiers,) whom kindness makes even worse!  Their disgraceful conduct makes me even more a disciple!  But that does not justify me.  May it be for my good (Romans 8:29) that the wild animals are ready for me!  I pray that I may find them promptly!  I shall coax them to devour me promptly unlike some whom they are afraid to touch.”  (Sometimes in the arena, the wild beasts behaved very strangely.  They would run away from the Christians they were meant to kill.  They had to be coaxed or prodded with hot irons to attack.  Sometimes, the beasts would attack their tormentors rather than the Christians!  Sometimes the Christians would call out to them so as to hurry them along and get it all over with!)  Ignacius continues: “If they aren’t willing, and if they refuse, I will compel them to do it!  I know what is best for me.  And now, I am beginning to be a disciple!  May nothing seen or unseen begrudge my attaining to Jesus Christ!  Let fire, and cross, and encounters with wild animals, tearing apart of bones, hacking of limbs, crushing of the whole body, tortures of the devil come upon me, if only I may attain to Jesus Christ!”  Saint Paul himself wrote with this same kind of passion:  “I want to know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”  (Philippians 3:10-11.)  Such great courage!  What would give these men such passion?  What would give them such bravery?  Mere devotion cannot explain these times.  Something else, profound, and astonishing was at work in these days.

The mangled and brutal death of Jesus does explain their intense devotion, but it does not explain their courage!  If Jesus had merely died like any mortal man, and if that were the end of the story, devotion would be understandable, but courage would melt away like snow in summer!  Devotion to Christ would have sprung up like beautiful spring flowers-but in the scorching desert wind of persecution, this devotion would have dried up and blown away. 

Ignacius tells us just what that something was.  He spent many hours walking along the seashore with the beloved Polycarp, who in turn, had walked many times with the beloved apostle John.  Ignacius found out the rest of the story from Polycarp, who in turn, heard the story from John himself.  The tree of devotion had deep roots deep down in the bedrock of resurrection!  That is the thing that gave these men such incredible courage!  Ignacius explains their courage and the reason for it in this way:  “I know, and am convinced that after the resurrection, He was in the flesh.  When He came to Peter and his companions, He said to them, “Take hold!  Handle me and see that I am not a bodiless phantom!”  And they at once touched Him and were convinced!”  Finally, Peter understood!  Peter lost his courage because Jesus, the source of his courage, was about to die!  However, Peter found his courage once again, when, the very source of his courage, Jesus Christ, overcame death forever!  Peter was terrified of death in the same way that a child is terrified by nightmares in the night.  When the sunlight of resurrection rose at last, Peter’s fear of the long night disappeared with the receding darkness!  Their faith did not cause them to see a resurrection!  No!  Rather, a real resurrection caused their unwavering faith!

Polycarp knew that the Phillippian Christians were about to face a terrible trial of persecution!  He knew they would need much more than mere devotion to get through it.  They would also need to be inspired by true examples of the holy faith.  So Ignacius wrote these words to the Philippians:  “I urge you all to be obedient to practice the unfailing endurance that you saw before your eyes, not only in blessed Ignacius, Rufus, and Zosimus, but in others from your own number.  And Paul himself, and the rest of the apostles satisfy, that all these, did not run in vain!  But in faith, and in righteousness, and that they are in the place that is their due by the side of the Lord whose sufferings they share.” 

Paul, and the others of such great courage did not want to run in vain!  Paul admonished his flock: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?  Run in such a way as to get the prize.  Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training.  They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever!  Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air.  No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize!”  (1 Corinthians 9:27.)  Only one gets the prize!  This is the one who believes that Jesus has risen from the grave!  The one who wins this prize wins a crown that will last forever!  What is this crown?  It is life that never ends!  Since Jesus lives forever, then so do those who are loyal to Him!

It is the prize that motivates the athlete to win!  It is the resurrection to eternal life that motivated these men and women, and even children, to such deeds of courage and endurance.  Polycarp wrote:  For they did not love this world, but the one who died in our behalf; and for our sakes was raised by God.”  It is at this point that we begin our real story of the beloved Polycarp. 

It was the time of Marcus and his co-ruler, Auraleus Verus.  Polycarp was very old now.  When he was young, he had met the apostles near the end of their earthly journey.  The games kept the masses entertained!  The games!  The games!  Always the games!  The crowds were in an uproar today!  Germanicus was at the games-not as a spectator, but as a participant!  He was about fifteen years old.  Perhaps he could be persuaded to deny his young faith in Christ.  Before putting him to the test, they would first have him watch the games!  Oh and what Germanicus saw!  Germanicus turned white as he saw one man viciously scourged!  A whip embedded with heavy sharp pieces of metal was flung against the victim.  The heavy whip ripped through skin and muscle.  Germanicus nearly fainted when he saw the man’s internal organs exposed for everyone to see!  Intestines, liver, kidneys, all could be seen as the man died horribly!  Germanicus knew that they intended this kind of death for him! 

Others were pealed alive with instruments embedded with sharp seashells!  Still others were impaled on sharp spikes where they hung in agony for hours!  Still others were flung to beasts driven mad by hunger!  These Christians were the ones treated with some degree of mercy!  They died quickly!  A roar, a flow of blood, a crunch of bone, and it was over for them! 

“Germanicus!”  It was time!  Fear surged through his young body.  What if he should let Christ down in front of them all!  What if he couldn’t stand the pain?  What if he should stand before Christ and face eternal disgrace?  The prize!  The prize!  Eternal life!  Germanicus thought of this over and over and over.  The prize!  That was the thing.  The crowd grew quiet as the proconsul motioned to them for silence.