STRONG FAITH AND RAPID GROWTH: THE PARADOX OF THE CHURCH IN PERSECUTION

III century writer Tertullian said “the Blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Well, modern scholars acknowledge that today this definition is true in the same way as in the first years of Christianity.

From Africa to the Middle East, Asia and across the globe, Christians today are the object of persecution. The American organization “Opendoors” reports that every year nearly four thousand Christians killed for their faith, and thousands of others suffer from beatings, abduction, rape and false arrests.

Writer and historian bill Bennett said that the current persecution of the Church can be the worst in history: “I think today the situation is perhaps even worse. If you count the total of the Islamic middle East, China and other places, the persecution of Christians did not stop even for a day. Some small Christian groups in the middle East, in Iraq and in Iran was destroyed, perhaps forever.”

But from the earliest days of the Church, whenever persecution increased, the Church grew and even prospered. Bennett calls it “one of the great paradoxes of Christianity.”

“They were doing to the Christians all that he could think of. But the wonderful thing is that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church. The greater the persecution, the faster growing Church,” says bill Bennett.

In a detailed historical story entitled “Tested by fire: a History of the first thousand years of Christianity” Bennett writes about the first years of persecution, fortitude, and prosperity of the Church.

“This is a wonderful story. In the sense that a small group is becoming one of the world’s religions and forever changes the world is about Christianity. This story is not too well known. But I like to talk about it, how about the second greatest story ever told ever” — continues bill Bennett.

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