The Martyr's Mindset: Ignatius of Antioch and Death as Worship

How many modern Christians consider dying to be the worst thing that can happen to them? We pray for safety, healing, and protection, and rightly so. However, do we live in the truth that death has truly lost its power? Or do we still tremble in terror before it, as if Christ never rose? 

For the earliest followers of Christ, the question was never “will I survive?” It was “will I be faithful in death?” Few better display this heart of surrender than Ignatius of Antioch.

Around 110 A.D. (about as early as the early church can get!) Ignatius, a bishop of Antioch, was arrested by…