We were at the Temple worshipping when we heard a great noise from the courts. Suddenly, a priest called for the Temple gates to be shut and demanded that all worshippers leave the precincts of the Temple immediately. Everyone was rushing out, for it was reported that someone had brought gentiles to desecrate the Temple. The Roman soldiers came to the outer courts to quell the uprising and restore order. They arrested one worshipper who was being accused and beaten by the mob for bringing in Greeks and preaching against the Temple and the Mosaic law…
We had all gathered to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem, the holy city. Jews and converts to Judaism thronged the city of David in their numbers. The new religious sect of the Nazarene Rabbi, called Christianity, had spread throughout Judaea and the Roman Empire. The Jewish leaders were determined to stamp it out, but the more they persecuted them, the more they spread…unfortunately for them, one zealous Pharisee leader, called Saul, who had been most zealous in arresting and killing the Christians, had also joined them some years back…and he was now their most ardent evangelist.
It was rumored that Saul, now Paul, was coming to Jerusalem as well…and the leaders wasted no time plotting his death. So while Saul was at the Temple, the Pharisees raised a false alarm that he had brought a stranger into the Temple. While he was being beaten by the people, the Roman soldiers came to arrest him…then about 40 men ganged up, proclaimed a fast, and cursed themselves thus:
“We would neither eat nor drink till we have killed Paul”
These men, more than forty, sincerely believed that fasting and cursing themselves to kill Paul was doing God a great service. For them, killing him would be a great religious achievement for it was sanctioned by the leaders of the Jews; didn’t the High priest himself sanction the death of Christ for the nation?
The determination of these Jews to kill God’s servants is not surprising or singular. Why, because thousands of Christians or people of dissenting faith have been killed by the State or established religions of their day. Millions of Waldensians, Huguenots, Albigensis, Lollards, Hussites, Lutherans, Puritans, Anabaptists, Calvinists, Quakers, etc., were haunted to death like animals or burnt at the stake for their religious beliefs. Thousands of Waldensians were smoked and suffocated to death in caves for their insistence to keep their own religion.
But for Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island and Providence, William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and other libertarians, America 🇺🇸 would have been a religiously intolerant society. In colonial America and Medieval Europe, any form of religious belief besides that of the State or established religion was banned on the pain of death. Interestingly, these murderous activities were done with the backing and blessing of the Catholic or Anglican church…for they believed they were doing so for God…
In Islamic and non-Christian countries, many Christians are still being killed for their faith and evangelistic activities. Thousands of Uyghur Muslims are being persecuted in concentration camps in China. Many Jihadists believe that killing non-muslims and other non-conformists will earn them a place in Heaven. The number of people who have died for their beliefs, only Heaven will reveal…and most of these are done by religious people who claim to do it for God…
“Unless we kill him [for his beliefs], we are bound by an oath and a curse never to eat or drink”…dear reader, leave the “unbeliever in your doctrines and teachings” to your deity. Let your deity deal with him/her. It’s not within your remit to take another’s life for his/her non-belief. Try as the Jews, Caesars, Papacy, and Islamic States/Jihadists tried to silence dissent with death, the Christian’s blood was a seed that sprung up more converts.
