Japan.  1596.

After they had been tried, found guilty, and sentenced to die, 26 Christians were marched to the place where crudely made crosses stood.

Almost 3 months earlier they had been arrested in Kyoto, Japan and been charged with following Christ.  One of them was Ibaragi Kun.  Seeing how young Ibaragi was, an officer took him aside and urged him to recant his faith to save his life.  Looking the officer in the eye, Kun said confidently, “Sir,it would be far better if you yourself became a Christian.  Then you could go with me to Heaven.”  (I imagine he was smiling as he said it.)  The officer stared, startled by the young man’s faith.  Finally Ibaragi broke the silence and asked “Sir, which cross is mine?”.

The bewildered officer slowly pointed to the smallest of the 26 crosses.  Young Kun ran to it knelt before it and embraced it.  When the soldiers began to nail his hands and feet to the cross he did not cry out in pain.  He courageously accepted the path that was laid before him.  The crucifixion of the 26 Christians on November 23,1596 was the beginning of an intense period of persecution in Japan.  In the next seventy years close to one million Japanese believers laid their lives down for their faith.  Many would embrace their own crosses to follow the example of young Ibaragi Kun: a mighty man of God, a martyr, a 12-year-old.

Writing that you might joyfully & willingly embrace your cross, because God embraced His,

Matt

Story adapted from “Extreme Devotion”, VOM.  http://www.persecution.com/

Merry Christmas!

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Hope Has Come

Writing that you might revel in the advent,

Matt

Saints Timothy and Maura suffered for the faith during the persecution under the emperor Diocletian (284-305).  Here is their story:

“Tell him, Timothy, please!” shouted Maura, pleading with her husband. “Tell the governor where the Scriptures are hidden and be free! I cannot bear to watch any more of this.” Timothy and Maura, residents of the Roman province of Mauritania, had been married only a few short weeks before their arrest.

Maura had watched in horror as soldiers put out her husband’s eyes with hot irons, trying to break his will. Now, hanging upside down with a weight around his neck on the orders of Roman governor Arrianus, Timothy waited for his gag to be removed. The fear he initially felt at his arrest had been replaced with a sense of divine calm.

Instead of renouncing his faith and disclosing the location of his church’s copies of the Scriptures, as the soldiers expected, Timothy scolded his young wife. “Do not let your love for me come before your love for Christ,” he urged Maura, affirming his willingness and determination to die for his Savior. Seeing her husband’s courage, Maura’s own resolve was strengthened.

Arrianus, already in a rage at Timothy’s refusal, set out to break Maura’s newfound courage. He sentenced her to the harshest tortures of the Roman world. Yet she would not break. She refused to deny Christ.

After each had endured unspeakable suffering, Timothy and Maura were crucified, side by side.

Writing that your devotion to Christ…in the midst of the fiercest trials…would not break,

Matt

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Story from VOM www.persecutionblog.com

Pastor Florescu couldn’t bear to watch his son being beaten by the Communist officers. He had already been beaten himself, and he had not slept for two weeks for fear of being attacked by the starving rats the Communists had forced into his prison cell. The Romanian police wanted Florescu to give up other members of his underground church so that they, too, could be captured.

Seeing that the beatings and torture weren’t working, the Communists brought in Florescu’s son Alexander, only fourteen years old, and began to beat the boy. While Florescu watched, they hammered his son’s body unmercifully, telling the pastor that they would beat his son to death unless he told them the locations of other believers.

Finally, half mad, Florescu screamed for them to stop.

“Alexander, I must say what they want!” he called out to his son. “I can’t bear your beatings anymore.”

His body bruised, blood running from his nose and mouth, Alexander looked his father in the eye. “Father, don’t do me the injustice of having a traitor as a parent. Stand strong! If they kill me, I will die with the word Jesus on my lips.”

The boy’s courage enraged the Communist guards, and they beat him to death as his father watched. Not only did he hold on to his faith, he helped his father do the same.

Writing that you might die with ‘Jesus’ on your lips,

Matt

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Story taken from VOM http://www.persecutionblog.com/

• “He who would place himself in front of a fast moving railway car will be crushed and would be just as foolish as you who are opposing the gospel. If the gospel is true, remember that truth is mighty and must prevail. Who are you to attempt to stand against it? You will be crushed. But let me tell you, when the railway car runs over you the wheel will not be raised even an inch by your size. For what are you? A tiny gnat, a creeping worm, which that wheel will crush to less than nothing and not leave you even a name as having ever been an opponent of the gospel. Let all the infidels in the world know assuredly that the Gospel will win its way, whatever they may do. Poor creatures…their efforts to oppose the gospel are not even worthy of our notice. And we need not fear that they can stop the truth. They are like a gnat who thinks he can quench the sun. Go tiny insect and do it if you can. You will only burn your wings and die. Likewise there may be a fly who thinks it could drink the ocean dry. Drink the ocean if you can, o fly. More likely you will sink in it and it will drink you.”