Strength in Weakness: The Power of Martyrdom
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"For God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made His light shine in all hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." [00:01:31]
"We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." [00:01:55]
"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. A few years ago, I was sitting at the end of a long postgraduate seminar table. We were engaged in a study of the third of Calvin's four books of the Christian Institutes. I had assigned to a Korean student the study and analysis of chapters 9 and 10, Bearing the Cross and Meditation on the Future Life." [00:03:52]
"He looked up at me from the other end of the table, and then said very quietly, but in good English, 'The study of these chapters, Bearing the Cross and Meditation on the Future Life has helped me personally to understand my grandfather better.' 'You see,' he added, 'my grandfather was a martyr for Jesus.'" [00:04:36]
"It reminded me also of a truth deeply connected with that first truth, that there have never been so many Christian believers on the face of the earth. It was even possible at that point in the twentieth century that there were more Christian believers alive on the earth than all Christian believers at all times and places in the first nineteen centuries of the church's history." [00:06:02]
"Tertullian wrote, and wrote in the context in which the Christian church had become the whipping boy for everything that went wrong in ancient Roman society, and he addressed his Apology to the rulers of the Roman Empire to urge upon them, as incidentally Josef Tson did, in our own day to the communist leaders in his land to urge upon them the necessity of understanding that Christians are always the best citizens which rulers ever have." [00:09:06]
"In an almost uncanny parallel to our own times, it was kosher to be religious as long as you were pluralistic in your religion, but as soon as you became utterly committed to the sole lordship of Jesus Christ, then you became the object of attack, and so it was in the second century, as Tertullian writes in the fortieth chapter of his Apology." [00:10:51]
"Kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow, for the blood of Christians is seed. And he is, of course, simply weaving into his teaching the great words, for example, of the one hundred and twenty-sixth psalm." [00:12:02]
"From eleven maimed disciples, there had come by the end of the second century AD somewhere in the region of two million Christian believers packing the empire as living testimony to the fact that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. These early Christians knew, as the Apostle Paul had taught them, when he himself was in prison and contemplating the possibility of martyrdom, although he expected to be released." [00:14:32]
"Patrick Hamilton began to be seized by the grace of God in the gospel which he had never learned in his home town or in his home country of Scotland, things that he had never heard before, that there is but one Mediator between God, the Man, Christ Jesus, that we do not need to go to a priest or to the mother of our Lord in order to be saved; we can go directly to the Savior." [00:19:07]
"Jesus builds His church and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. Forgive another 'When I was a teenager' story, but when I was a teenager, you know, one of the men who made the most impression on me for pure godliness was a China Inland Mission missionary by the name of Henry Guinness." [00:30:15]
"It is only as death works in us that life will work in our lives. It is only as we embrace the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ that we may be crucified to the world and the world crucified to us, that the world will begin to associate the contemporary Christian church and the crucified Messiah of Calvary and the triumphant Savior of the garden tomb." [00:42:05]
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"We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." [00:01:55]
"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. A few years ago, I was sitting at the end of a long postgraduate seminar table. We were engaged in a study of the third of Calvin's four books of the Christian Institutes. I had assigned to a Korean student the study and analysis of chapters 9 and 10, Bearing the Cross and Meditation on the Future Life." [00:03:52]
"He looked up at me from the other end of the table, and then said very quietly, but in good English, 'The study of these chapters, Bearing the Cross and Meditation on the Future Life has helped me personally to understand my grandfather better.' 'You see,' he added, 'my grandfather was a martyr for Jesus.'" [00:04:36]
"It reminded me also of a truth deeply connected with that first truth, that there have never been so many Christian believers on the face of the earth. It was even possible at that point in the twentieth century that there were more Christian believers alive on the earth than all Christian believers at all times and places in the first nineteen centuries of the church's history." [00:06:02]
"Tertullian wrote, and wrote in the context in which the Christian church had become the whipping boy for everything that went wrong in ancient Roman society, and he addressed his Apology to the rulers of the Roman Empire to urge upon them, as incidentally Josef Tson did, in our own day to the communist leaders in his land to urge upon them the necessity of understanding that Christians are always the best citizens which rulers ever have." [00:09:06]
"In an almost uncanny parallel to our own times, it was kosher to be religious as long as you were pluralistic in your religion, but as soon as you became utterly committed to the sole lordship of Jesus Christ, then you became the object of attack, and so it was in the second century, as Tertullian writes in the fortieth chapter of his Apology." [00:10:51]
"Kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow, for the blood of Christians is seed. And he is, of course, simply weaving into his teaching the great words, for example, of the one hundred and twenty-sixth psalm." [00:12:02]
"From eleven maimed disciples, there had come by the end of the second century AD somewhere in the region of two million Christian believers packing the empire as living testimony to the fact that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. These early Christians knew, as the Apostle Paul had taught them, when he himself was in prison and contemplating the possibility of martyrdom, although he expected to be released." [00:14:32]
"Patrick Hamilton began to be seized by the grace of God in the gospel which he had never learned in his home town or in his home country of Scotland, things that he had never heard before, that there is but one Mediator between God, the Man, Christ Jesus, that we do not need to go to a priest or to the mother of our Lord in order to be saved; we can go directly to the Savior." [00:19:07]
"Jesus builds His church and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. Forgive another 'When I was a teenager' story, but when I was a teenager, you know, one of the men who made the most impression on me for pure godliness was a China Inland Mission missionary by the name of Henry Guinness." [00:30:15]
"It is only as death works in us that life will work in our lives. It is only as we embrace the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ that we may be crucified to the world and the world crucified to us, that the world will begin to associate the contemporary Christian church and the crucified Messiah of Calvary and the triumphant Savior of the garden tomb." [00:42:05]
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