Daniel Kolenda in his book Live Before You Die tells the story of an American soldier in the Vietnam War who was about to step on an anti-personnel landmine that was hidden from his sight. His comrade across the battlefield, who could see the impending disaster from his vantage point, stood up from behind his protective barricade and shouted a life-saving warning to his friend. At that moment the brave young man received a gunshot wound that ended his life.
A couple of years later, at an honorary memorial service in the United States, the soldier whose life had been saved from the landmine had a chance to meet the wife and son of his deceased friend. The son, who was only seven years old, had never gotten a chance to really know his father. The soldier could tell that this boy’s heart was broken, so he knelt down next to him and put his hand on the child’s shoulder. “I want you to know,” the soldier said, “your father saved my life.” The little boy looked up at him with tears streaming down his cheeks. “Sir,” he said, “were you worth it?”
Another minister who disguised himself under the name of George tells in his book about God’s Underground the following incident:
A Russian Army captain came to a minister in Hungary and asked to see him alone. The young captain was very brash and very conscious of his role as a conqueror. When he had been led to a small conference room and the door was closed, he nodded towards the cross that hung on the wall. ‘You know that thing is a lie,’ he said to the minister. ‘It’s just a piece of trickery you ministers use to delude the poor people to make it easier for the rich to keep them ignorant. Come on now, we alone. Admit to me that you never really believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God!’ The minister smiled. ‘But, my poor young man, of course, I believe it. It is true.’
I won’t have you play these tricks on me! Cried the captain. ‘This is serious. Don’t laugh at me!’ He drew out his revolver and held it close to the body of the minister.’ Unless you admit to me that it is a lie, I will fire!’ ‘I cannot admit that, for it is not true. Our Lord is really and only the Son of God,’ said the minister. The captain flung his revolver on the floor and embraced the man of God. Tears sprang to his eyes. ‘It is true!’ he cried. ‘It is true. I believe so, too, but I could not be sure men would die for this belief until I found it out for myself. Oh, thank you! You have strengthened my faith. Now I too can die for Christ. You have shown me how.’
When the Russians occupied Romania, two armed Russian soldiers entered a church with guns in their hands. They said, ‘We don’t believe in your faith. Those who do not abandon it immediately will be shot at once! Those who abandon your faith move to the right!’ Some moved to the right and were then ordered to leave the church and go home. They fled for their lives just like the disciples did when Jesus was arrested on the night of His crucifixion. When the Russians were alone with the remaining Christians, they embraced them and confessed, ‘We too are Christians, but we wished to have fellowship only with those who consider the truth worth dying for.’
The Cost of Discipleship
When Jesus Christ chose the twelve apostles, their role was to confirm by their words and their lives the reality of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. After the arrest, trial, and death of Jesus Christ, these men initially fled in fear. They were devastated by His death because death seemed so cruel and final. They must felt terrible when they saw their Lord, whom they had left everything to follow, being crucified on the cross.
Historical records of the first century clearly prove that every one of the disciples apart from the Apostle John later faced a martyr’s death without denying their faith in Jesus Christ as their Saviour. The only reason why these men were transformed from defeated cowards to courageous men of God within a few days of the death of the Saviour was their personal intimate knowledge and experience of the facts surrounding the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Non-believers, atheists, agnostics, etc… have suggested that the disciples, during the decades following His death, simply invented their accounts of Jesus. But these apostles were continually threatened and pressured to deny their Lord during their ministry; especially as they faced torture and martyrdom. However, none of these men who spent time with Jesus chose to save their lives by denying their faith in Him. Each of the apostles was called upon to pay the ultimate price to prove their faith in Jesus, affirming with their life’s blood that Jesus was the true Messiah, the Son of the Living God and the only hope of salvation for sinful humanity.
Most of the information about the deaths of the apostles is derived from early church traditions. The Church historian Schumacher researched the lives of the apostles and recounted the history of their martyrdoms.
Andrew died on an X-shaped cross in Patras of Achaia, Bartholomew (Nathaniel was flayed alive in Armenia, James (brother of John) was beheaded by Herod Agrippa in Jerusalem, James (son of Cleopas and Mary) was stoned, Jude (Thaddeus), the half brother of Jesus was shot with arrows in Armenia.
Matthew was slain by the sword in Parthia, Mark died in Alexandria, Egypt, after being dragged by horses through the streets until he was dead. Peter was crucified upside down in Rome because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die in the same way that His Master and Lord Jesus Christ had died.
Stephen the first Christian martyr was stoned to death after preaching one of the longest sermons in the Book of Acts. James the Just and half-brother of Jesus was captured and taken to the very pinnacle of where the devil took Jesus in Matthew chapter 4.
He was told to blaspheme Christ, or be thrown off! James the Just replied: “I see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of glory!’’ So they threw them off. But the fall didn’t kill him, so they started to stone him. As he lay there, with his bones broken and the stones being thrown at him, he said, Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they do.” Finally someone, out of sheer mercy, got a big wooden club and clubbed his head, and he died.
John was the only one of the 12 apostles left after the others had already suffered a martyr’s death. He became a political prisoner on the island of Patmos because of his exclusive devotion to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus which was taken as treason by the Roman authorities. He subsequently faced martyrdom when he was boiled in a huge basin of boiling oil but was miraculously delivered to become the only apostle of the 12 to die a natural and peaceful death.
The Early Christians
We also know that thousands of the early Christians and those of later ages suffered violent death, mutilation, burning and other processes that marred and destroyed their physical bodies. Nero persecuted Christians by daubing them with pitch and burning them alive as torches for his nightly garden parties or sewing them in the skins of wild animals to be hunted by dogs and lions.
One notable Christian who was martyred in about 155 under Antonius Pius was Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna and once a student of the apostle John. Forced into the stadium, Polycarp was asked by the Roman proconsul to swear by the genius of the emperor and to curse Christ. He replied,
Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?
Before the day was over, he was burned at the stake. Like all martyrs before him and the multitudes after him, he had been transformed by the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
All this happened because His message and His physical resurrection transformed His early followers, who did not pick up the sword to defend themselves even during the brutal persecutions, but rather went about spreading His love and the need for repentance and forgiveness of sins to all regardless of their race, sex, ethnicity, poverty, or wealth.
They did so because they believed with all their heart, soul and mind the Words of Jesus: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). This echoed the conviction of Peter’s words spoken to his fellow Jews:
And there is salvation in and through no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by and in which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).
There have been countless people who have been transformed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These followers have produced revolutionary changes-socially, politically, economically, and culturally.
As someone has said, Christianity is not a religion; but a revolution against the kingdom of darkness.” And as George Sarton has said, “The birth of Christianity changed forever the face of the Western world.” Despite widespread persecutions, Christ’s transformed followers, especially during the first few centuries, effected that change because Christ’s life and teachings challenged almost everything for which the Roman world had stood. The Christians rejected the pagan gods of the Greeks and Romans.
These gods, said the second-century Christian apologist Aristides, were man-made and thus not gods at all; moreover, they were given to all of the weaknesses and sins common to mankind. Some of the gods, according to Roman mythology, committed adultery, murder, sodomy, and theft; others were envious, greedy, and passionate; still others had physical impediments; some had even died.
But Christians said Aristides, worship and honour God who is neither male nor female, whom “the heavens do not contain…but the heavens and all things visible and invisible are contained in Him. This had already been confirmed by Paul’s famous sermon at Athens on Mars Hill. The Bible tells us while Paul was waiting for Silas and Timothy at Athens, his spirit was grieved and roused to anger as he saw that the city was full of idols.
So, Paul began to preach to them about Jesus Christ, a man who had recently been crucified in Jerusalem. He drew their attention to a natural debate before he could engage them about the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. These Epicurean and Stoic philosophers thought that Paul was trying to be an announcer of foreign deities because he preached Jesus and the resurrection (see Acts 17:18).
Paul concludes that God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now commands all men everywhere to repent. In the past God permitted all nations to walk in their ways, but He did not leave them without any evidence of Himself and His goodness. He sent rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying their hearts with nourishment and happiness.
However, the appointed time has come when He expects and charges all men everywhere to repent and turn from their ignorance, idolatry, and superstition because He has appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by a Man Jesus Christ, whom He has proved to everyone who this is by raising Him from the dead (see Acts 17:19-31).
Death Is Not Final
To the Christian, death is not final. A believer simply falls asleep in Jesus and wakes up instantly in the presence of God. But those who die without the Lord Jesus Christ are referred to as “the dead.” Someday the dead will stand before the Great White Throne of God and be judged according to the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.
They will then be cast into the lake of fire. “This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14-15). Some say that when Christians die, they sleep in the grave until Jesus returns and raises the dead. However, Paul said, “To live is Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21). To sleep in the grave would not be gain! Paul knew that physical death would allow him to “depart and be with Christ,” which, he said, is very much better (Philippians 1:23).
We will be fully conscious one minute after we have died. We will know who we are, we will have our memory. It is only our body that dies, not our spirit. Death separates body and spirit. Later, spirit and body will be reunited in the resurrection. When Paul talks about putting off our earthly tent, he says to be “absent from the body” is “to be at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:1-9).
In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, he refers to those who have died in Christ as having “fallen asleep in Jesus” because this is what death is to the believer- falling asleep and waking up in the presence of our Lord.
Because Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life, the Christian will not see death. This truth caused Jesus to proclaim,
I am Myself the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in (adheres to, trusts in, and relies on) Me, although he may die, yet he shall live; And whoever continues to live and believes in (has faith in, cleaves to, and relies on) Me shall never actually die at all (John 11:25-26).
Death is conquered! The Tomb is Empty! Jesus becomes the Giver of Life (John 20:21-23). This is the Good News that Paul preaches to us. “It is this Good News that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you—unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place” (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-2).
Jesus Christ is the divine, eternal Son of God, who became a member of the human race by virgin birth. He led a sinless life, died on the cross as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of humanity, was buried and rose again in bodily form from the grave on the third day.
He ascended into heaven, whence He will return to earth in person; to judge the living and the dead. Everyone who repents of sin and trusts in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ receives forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life.
