From the time of the crucifixion, Jewish malignity and hatred were directed against all who professed a belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ. In the early stages of their ministry several of the apostles were imprisoned" and the priestly leaders sought to take their lives. Stephen was stoned to death because of his testimony; and the persecution against the Church became general. James, the son of Zebedee, was slain by order of Herod,' and Peter was saved from a similar fate only by a miraculous intervention." The scriptural record informs us as to the ultimate fate of but few of the apostles; and secular history is likewise incomplete. That Peter would be numbered with the martyrs was made known by the resurrected Lord." Paul sets forth the fact that the apostles lived in the very shadow of death' and that persecution was their heritage.". 13. Not only did the Jews wage relentless persecution against those of their number who professed Christ, but they sought to stir up opposition on the part of the Romans, and to accomplish this end charged that the Christians were plotting treason against the Roman government. Even during the personal ministry of the early apostles, persecution of the saints had spread from Jerusalem, throughout Palestine and into the adjacent provinces. In this evil work the Jews sought to incite their own people living in the outlying parts, and also to arouse the opposition of the officers and Verses 11-13; see also II Cor. 4: 8, 9; 6: 4, 5. ་ rulers of the Roman dominions. As evidence of this phase of the persecution, partly Jewish and partly pagan, instigated by Jews and participated in by others, the following quotation from Mosheim may suffice: 14. "The Jews who lived out of Palestine, in the Roman provinces, did not yield to those of Jerusalem in point of cruelty to the innocent disciples of Christ. We learn from the history of the Acts of the Apostles, and other records of unquestionable authority, that they spared no labor, but zealously seized every occasion of animating the magistrates against the Christians, and setting on the multitude to demand their destruction. The high priest of the nation and the Jews who dwelt in Palestine were instrumental in inciting the rage of these foreign Jews against the infant Church, by sending messengers to exhort them, not only to avoid all intercourse with the Christians, but also to persecute them in the most vehement manner. For this inhuman order they endeavored to find out the most plausible pretexts; and therefore, they gave out, that the Christians were enemies to the Roman emperor, since they acknowledged the authority of a certain person whose name was Jesus, whom Pilate had punished capitally as a malefactor by a most righteous sentence, and on whom, nevertheless, they conferred the royal dignity." 15. In the latter half of the first century, the scene of Judaistic persecution of the Church had shifted from Jerusalem to the outlying provinces; and the cause of this was the general exodus of Christians from the city whose destruction had been decreed. Our Lord's predictions as to 9 Mosheim, "Ecclesiastical History," Cent. I, Part I, 5: 2. the fate of Jerusalem and His warnings to the peoples had been very generally heeded. Eusebius informs us that the body of the Church had moved from Jerusalem into the provinces beyond the Jordan, and thus largely escaped the calamities of the Jews who remained. Notes. 1. PERSECUTION IN DIFFERENT DISPENSATIONS. It may be argued that, judging from the history of the re-established Church in the present dispensation, persecution may tend to strengthen rather than to weaken the Church, and that therefore violent opposition in earlier times cannot be considered a true cause leading to final disruption. In reply it may be said that the present is the dispensation of the fulness of times,-a period in which the Church shall triumph, and during which the powers of evil are limited and restrained in their opposition; whereas the period of the apostasy was one of temporary victory for Satan. Our belief in the eventual triumph of good over evil must not blind us to the fact that evil is frequently allowed a short-lived success, and a seeming victory. The permanency of the Latter-day Church has been not less surely predicted than was the temporary duration of the Primitive Church. Satan was given power to overcome the saints in former days, and the persecutions he waged against them and the officers of the Church contributed to his passing success. It has been decreed that he shall not have power to destroy the Church in the last dispensation, and his persecution of the saints today will be futile as a means of bringing about a general apostasy in these latter times. 2. PERSECUTION AS A POSSIBLE CAUSE OF APOSTASY. "Let it not be a matter of surprise that I class those persecutions as among the means through which the church was destroyed. The force of heathen rage was aimed at the leaders and strong men of the body religious; and being long-continued and relentlessly cruel, those most steadfast in their adherence to the Church invariably s See Luke 21: 5-9, 20-24. Eusebius, "Ecclesiastical History," Book III, ch. 5. became its victims. These being stricken down, it left none but weaklings to contend for the faith, and made possible those subsequent innovations in the religion of Jesus which a pagan public sentiment demanded, and which so completely changed both the spirit and form of the Christian religion as to subvert it utterly. Let me further ask that no one be surprised that violence is permitted to operate in such a case. The idea that the right is always victorious in this world, that truth is always triumphant and innocence always divinely protected, are old, fond fables with which well-meaning men have amused credulous multitudes; but the stern facts of history and actual experience in life correct the pleasing delusion. Do not misunderstand me. I believe in the ultimate victory of the right, the ultimate triumph of truth, the final immunity of innocence from violence. These-innocence, truth and the right-will be at the last more than conquerors; they will be successful in the war, but that does not prevent them from losing some battles. It should be remembered always that God has given to man his agency; and that fact implies that one man is as free to act wickedly as another is to do righteousness. Cain was as free to murder his brother as that brother was to worship God; and so the pagans and Jews were as free to persecute and murder the Christians as the Christians were to live virtuously and worship Christ as God. The agency of man would not be worth the name if it did not grant liberty to the wicked to fill the cup of their iniquity, as well as liberty to the virtuous to round out the measure of their righteousness. Such perfect liberty or agency God has given man; and it is only so variously modified as not to thwart his general purposes." (B. H. Roberts, "A New Witness for God," pp. 47, 48.) 3. EARLY PERSECUTIONS BY THE JEWS. "The innocence and virtue that distinguished so eminently the lives of Christ's servants, and the apostles' purity of the doctrine they taught, were not sufficient to defend them against the virulence and malignity of the Jews. The priests and rulers of that abandoned people not only loaded with injuries and reproach the apostles of Jesus and their disciples, but condemned as many of them as they could to death, and executed in the most irregular and barbarous manner their decrees. The murder of Stephen, of James the son of Zebedee, and of James surnamed the Just, bishop of Jerusalem, furnished dreadful examples of the truth of what we here advance. This odious malignity of the Jewish doctors against the heralds of the gospel, was undoubtedly owing to a secret apprehension that the progress of Christianity would destroy the credit of Judaism, and bring on the ruin of their pompous ceremonies." In a footnote to the foregoing, references appear as follows: "The martyrdom of Stephen is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles 7: 55; and that of James the son of Zebedee, Acts 12: 1, 2, and that of James the Just, bishop of Jerusalem, is mentioned by Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities, book XX, chap. 8; and by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History, book II, chap. 23." (Mosheim, "Ecclesiastical History," Cent. I, Part I, 5: 1.) 4. DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM BY THE ROMANS. "A rebellious disturbance among the Jews gave a semblance of excuse for a terrible chastisement to be visited upon them by their Roman masters, which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem (A. D. 71). The city fell after a six months' siege before the Roman arms led by Titus, son of the Emperor Vespasian. Josephus, the famous historian, to whom we owe most of our knowledge as to the details of the struggle, was himself a resident of Galilee and was carried to Rome among the captives. From his record we learn that nearly a million Jews lost their lives through the famine incident to the siege; many more were sold into slavery, and uncounted numbers were forced into exile. The city was utterly destroyed, and the site upon which the temple had stood was plowed up by the Romans in their search for treasure. Thus literally were the words of Christ fulfilled, 'There shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.' (Matt. 24; 1, 2; see also Luke 19: 44.)" (The Author, “The Articles of Faith," Lecture 17: 18.) |