martyrdom on Persecuted Church

Two thousand years ago, Christians were often hunted down and killed. Amid this darkness, the church began a radical practice. When a brother or sister was martyred for faith in Jesus, the Christian c...

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

An American pastor once asked an Indonesian missionary who works among Indonesians but with a different people group from his own, “Are you afraid you’ll get caught?” Christian mission work in Indones...

Leader: In today’s Scripture reading, we will hear the story of a violent man named Saul, whose life was radically changed by Jesus. Before encountering Jesus, Saul persecuted Christians; after enco...

Most of us are aware of various persecutions that took place during the first few centuries of the church’s existence. One particularly brutal local persecution took place during the reign of Nero, wh...

In the deeply moving novel Silence by Shusaku Endo, the protagonist, a young Jesuit priest named Sebastião Rodrigues describes in horror what it is like to watch two of his disciples, Japanese nationa...