Church History

If you are familiar with Alphanomega Ministries or Apologia Church, then you know that I'm the director of Alphanomega Ministries, which we began in 1983. How many people in the room were not in existence when we started Alphanomega Ministries?

Thank you very much. Makes me feel very old every time I say that. It's a lot of fun. But also one of the pastors at Apologia Church, and I've seen a number of you visit us down there currently in Mesa, Arizona.

And you might be aware of the fact that I'm road tripping right now. Last night on the road, thank goodness, though it's been a great three plus weeks. I'm looking forward to getting home, as most people probably would.

In fact, if it weren't for you all, I could have gotten home last night. And the fact that I rode my bike up Mount Charleston this morning. But that didn't have anything to do with my staying over. No, not at all.

So it's good to be with you this evening. What I've been asked to address, and I will do so recognizing that we have moms with children here. Las Vegas may never sleep, but I do. And I'm more of a morning person than a nighttime person.

So we will, I will not have you here. I will not preach a sermon as long as Jeff Durbin. Okay, how's that? I don't want to make sure you're aware that one of the two of us can control our time urges. But it was an interesting request, and that was to talk to you a little bit about just whoever I chose to talk about in church history.

The first class I taught after I was born. I have to leave the KOA, and I love Las Vegas' KOA. It's a parking lot, and it's just camping out in the wilderness in Las Vegas. I think they have fake trees there too.

But anyway, I have to leave at a certain time in the morning because I've planned it to get down to Metropolitan Kingman, Arizona. Anybody been to Kingman, Arizona? Wow, it's just a great place not to live, isn't it?

But they have 4G there, and so I'm going to pull into the Walmart parking lot because they generally don't chase you out of the Walmart parking lot if you're in an RV. And so I'm going to park down in the Walmart parking lot tomorrow, and I will be teaching a church history class from the front of my truck in Germany tomorrow morning at 10 a .m., which is I think 7 p .m. their time.

I think that's how it works out, something like that. Wonderful group of believers over there. We've been doing this up until 2020. I had visited them every year for years, and so I know them personally.

I'll probably never get to see them again, but we still do what we do. And so we've been doing church history, and we're barely through. We're right at the end of the period of persecution, and we actually haven't gone through the apologists and all sorts of other stuff, so we are going really slowly.

And they don't mind. They don't care. It's greatly encouraging. So church history is my thing. Thankfully, I had a great church history professor in seminary. Sadly, sometimes you can have professors in seminary and Bible college turn you off to a subject.

My church history professor turned me on to the subject, and I've had the opportunity of going over to Europe a number of times, and so a lot of these things I can sort of provide some background to. But what I want to do is I just want to look at a few people that you may have never heard of before, or if you have, you may only know a little something about them.

I'm not going to be doing a big bio of each one or anything like that. I just want to whet your appetite to recognize that we will, on one hand, say that Christ has been building his church for 2 ,000 years.

But if we really believed that, then we'd have some interest in what he has done in the lives of the people who came before us. But let's be honest. Most of evangelical Christianity in the United States could care less.

Church history is Billy Graham. I mean, that's as far back as it goes. And I was raised, certainly, within a context where if they didn't dress like you and preach like you and believe exactly like you, they probably weren't Christians anyways, which means there basically weren't any Christians until the 20th century.

And so the idea of an intimate connection to people who came before us. So let me give you an example. Let me talk about someone that I have no idea who he was. I don't know where he lived. But in 1993, Pope John Paul II visited the United States for World Youth Day.

And it was up in Denver, Colorado. And Rich Pierce and I, we are Alpha and Omega Ministries. We were Alpha and Omega Ministries back then. We're still Alpha and Omega Ministries today. We've grown not a bit.

And so we went up to Denver, Colorado. I did two debates with a man by the name of Jerry Matatix on the subject of the papacy. About seven, seven and a half hours we went. And while we were up there, I saw a newspaper advertisement, a newspaper article about the Papal Treasures Exhibit.

I don't want, I could care less about looking at rubies and diamonds and emeralds and stuff like that. I could care less about any of it. But I was reading the article and all of a sudden I went, Rich, we're going.

He's like, why? Because a page from papyri manuscript P72 was on display at the Papal Treasures Exhibit. So I want you to picture this. You walk in. It's one of the first things they have on display. It's under glass, of course.

I go walking up to it. This is the earliest manuscript we have of 1st, 2nd Peter and Jude It is from somewhere between 175 and 200. So it's very, very early. And I just start reading this thing. And I'm almost drooling on the glass.

And there's, it's very, very readable. There are a number of things called the Nomena Sacra. Christians, for some reason, we don't know why. God, Jesus, Lord, Son, there are a number of, Spirit, there are a number of words that for some reason they would always abbreviate them in their manuscripts and put a line over them.

We do not know why. But you can always tell an early Christian manuscript by, oh, look, Nomena Sacra. Sacred name. That's a Christian manuscript. We don't know why they did it. There's lots of theories and stuff like that.

But I'm looking at the Nomena Sacra. And it was the end of 1st Peter and the beginning of 2nd Peter. So 2nd Peter 1 .1 contains what's called a Granville-Sharp construction where Jesus is identified as our God and Savior.

God and Savior, both words applied to Jesus. And so I'm reading the Granville-Sharp construction. Here's an affirmation of the deity of Christ before the beginning of the 3rd century. This is very, very early.

This is long before Dan Brown ever thought anybody did that. Remember the Da Vinci Code? That guy made millions and millions of dollars out of lying to people. But I'm looking at all this stuff. And people would sort of walk up.

And Richard would stand next to me. And they'd read the description. And then they'd look down at it. And they'd look at me. And I'm just going like this, you know. And they'd look over at Rich and go, can he read that?

And Richard would go, yeah. Look at this, Harold. This man's reading this ancient manuscript. And people start gathering around. The security people are doing this number, you know. So Richard dragged me off to go watch, look at a tiara for a little while.

And then I come straight back again. And eventually, we got the look from the security people that we needed to move on. Point being, here is a manuscript written by someone we don't know. How many of you, I mean, can I borrow this?

Do you have to register this as a deadly weapon? I mean, that is, I mean. Okay, this is my friend Jeffrey Rice's work. This is a post-Tenebrous look. I could recognize it. And if I told you where he got this, you'd be stunned.

But I'll tell you, how many of us, how much of the Bible would you possess if the only way you could get it was to hand copy it? Most of us would not have Zephaniah. Okay, poor Zephaniah. I feel sorry for him.

You know, you're going to run into him someday in heaven. And he's going to go, what did you think of my book? And you go, who are you? Another good reason to read Zephaniah before you go to bed tonight, in case you die and write Zephaniah.

You do not want that to happen. But the reality is, most of us would have a much smaller Bible if we had to hand copy it. But here was someone, and he wasn't a professional scribe. It's not the best copied manuscript in the world, as far as style and handwriting, all those things.

But he loved the Word of God. And what probably happened was, he was traveling, he comes into another fellowship, and they start reading from this book. And he goes, I've never heard that book. What is it?

These are Peter's epistles. Well, we don't have that in our fellowship. Could I make a copy of that? Sure. Now, how long did it take to do that? I don't know. But try going home tonight, get out a piece of paper and a pen, and writing out 1st, 2nd Peter in June.

See how long it takes you. And see how many mistakes you make along the way, by the way. But he did because he loved the Word of God. And we don't know. Persecution was on and off from the days of Nero in A .D. 64 until the DCM persecution in 249, and then pretty much 249 all the way through 313.

It's empire-wide pretty much the whole time, and especially 303 to 313. It's just maximum effort at that time to wipe out all of Christianity. Was it legal for him to have copied that? Was he breaking the law, the Roman law to copy?

Because the Romans always went after our scriptures. They wanted to destroy our scriptures. They knew we were people of the book. And so was he risking his life? We don't know. I don't know who copied it.

No one put their names on it or anything like that. I don't know the exact date. But here is someone in church history who may have risked their lives, at the very least demonstrated a deep desire to possess the Word of God.

And somehow, because when you think of all the things that could destroy a papyrus manuscript over the course of 1 ,800 years, there's a lot of stuff. But somehow that amongst all those manuscripts that were produced back then is still in our possession today.

And we're very thankful to have it. But I'm thankful for the person. And that's what I was thinking of in 1993 as we left that exhibit. We just walked through the rest of it. It's like, whatever. And got out of there because that's why I'd gone to there.

The connection that I felt between myself and that scribe. Because I could have, I didn't bring it with me. I wish I had at that time. But I had my Nestle Ellen 27th edition of the Greek New Testament.

I could have reproduced all of his readings from my Greek New Testament. That's how complete a critical edition the Greek New Testament is today. It would have told me all the readings in his manuscript.

And this is material I've studied. I had spent years, when I was in Bible College, I wrote this huge paper on the Granville Sharp construction. So I had examined that stuff. And here, 1 ,800 years later, here is this connection to someone that I won't know until eternity.

I think I'll find out if I want to, I suppose, in eternity who wrote that. But there were Christians, we don't know, 99 .9999 of the believers who've gone before us. Their names are not recorded. They're recorded in heaven, but they're not recorded here.

And by the way, I'm from Apologia Church. We have so many babies at Apologia Church, none of them can distract me. So just simply don't worry about any, it's cool. We got to get the hiccups going there on the little one.

I understand that. Okay, there you go. You're doing good. See, it's sort of natural. Just there you go. God designed us to know how to get rid of them hiccups. Yep, there you go. I'm even a grandpa and I still know how to do that.

So yeah, anyway. So there's my thinking. There is someone who loved the Word of God. I love the Word of God. We are still connected after 1 ,800 years. Did he dress like me? No. Did he speak my language?

Of course not. My language didn't exist then. Might he have had different practices and he was singing different songs that may have looked different? Yeah. But we have a connection that when the world looks back at history, the only connection they have when they look back, people that are either common interests or a common humanity, but not that kind of connection.

Not that kind of connection. So even the people that we don't know, you have a connection to them and you may meet them someday and there may be many generations after us who will have connections to us.

See, it's easy for us. Now, I know where the elders are here. Some of you may know that over the past year, I finally got my eschatology straightened out and I heard a few people going, psst. Did anybody see the dividing line I did yesterday?

Just anybody? Okay. Did you see the shirt I had on? It said Dat Post Mill. And so one of my pre-mill friends on Twitter said, man, that was great content on the DL today, but man, that t-shirt. Sorry.

If it said Tim LaHaye, would it have made you feel any better? I don't know. But it's easy for us to look back and go, look at what that person did back there that has blessed me today. Here's the challenge.

How do we live in such a way to bless the generations coming after us? There is the question. When we were seeing Mighty Fortress, did you hear the last verse? Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.

The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still. Man, those words all of a sudden have meaning that they've never had for American Christians before. And they had meaning for Luther. Luther was this close to death many times.

And we may be facing situations like that. So we look back, we look at the bravery of people who stood firm in the face of persecution in the past. Might that be another reason for us to think through how we're going to respond to things in our day?

If we are of the opinion that there's never going to be anybody after us, then you don't have as much of a reason to stand firm. But I'm looking at a little teeny, teeny, teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny. When was that thing?

Are you all just coming back from the hospital or what? How old? Month and a half. All right. Okay. Well, guess what? In the natural course of events, that little one is going to have other little ones.

And then one after that. And so how do we live today to communicate through to them? That's the biggest thing for me right now. That's the biggest thing for me right now. I have grandchildren. Nothing has changed me more than grandchildren.

Getting one of those little things changes you a lot because they're very demanding. They are God's way of sucking the selfishness right out of you. Because they are the center of the universe. They are a black hole of selfishness.

God designed it that way. That's great. But nothing changed my perspective of the future more than having grandchildren. Because all of a sudden when your babies have babies, you realize that the circle of life in Disney was not all that far off.

It actually has some truth to it. It's going to continue on. So there's the first guy. Second guy I want to talk to you about is a man by the name. Well, actually, let's stay with the anonymous people for a second, okay?

Before I give you a name, let's talk about an anonymous person. There is an epistle. And man, I put way too much text in here. But there is an epistle. It's called the Epistle to Diognetus. Sometimes its author is called Mothetes.

Anyone know what Mothetes means in Greek? Thank you. Very good. Who said that? Put your hand up. Go ahead. Who said disciple? There you go. All right. Okay. One of the old men in the group. And that's what everybody was telling me.

And I'm like, he's younger than my youngest. And they're calling him the old guy. But anyways. Disciple. And so that wasn't his name. But that's how he's identified. He is the disciple of Christ who wrote an epistle to an unbeliever by the name of Diognetus.

We don't know when. I think it was around 125-ish is probably the best guess I would give, given the background of the epistle and things like that. It's a great epistle. Look it up sometime. Read it.

It's fragmentary. But most of it's there. The arguments are awesome. It's really fascinating to listen to a Christian talking to a non-Christian Roman at the beginning of the second century. And how he communicated his faith.

And how he engaged in. And how they had to engage in apologetics as part of the presentation of the gospel. Really, really good stuff. Really, really good stuff. But I want to read you part of the epistle of Diognetus.

And see what you think of what he has to say. So then having already planned everything in his mind together with his child. That is the son. He permitted us during the former time to be carried away by undisciplined impulses as we desired.

Led astray by pleasures and lusts. Not all because he took delight in our sins. But because he was patient. Not because he approved of that former season of unrighteousness. But because he was creating the present season of righteousness.

In order that we who in the former time were convicted by our own deeds as unworthy of life. Might now by the goodness of God be made worthy. And having clearly demonstrated our inability to enter the kingdom of God on our own.

Might be enabled to do so by God's power. But when our unrighteousness was fulfilled. And had been made perfectly clear that its wages, punishment and death were to be expected. Then the season arrived during which God had decided to reveal at last his goodness and power.

Oh the surpassing kindness and love of God. He did not hate us or reject us or bear a grudge against us. Instead he was patient and forbearing. In his mercy he took upon himself our sins. He himself gave us his own son as a ransom for us.

The holy one for the lawless. The guiltless for the guilty. The just for the unjust. The incorruptible for the corruptible. The immortal for the mortal. For what else but his righteousness could have covered our sins?

In whom was it possible for us the lawless and ungodly to be justified except in the son of God alone? Oh the sweet exchange. Oh the incomprehensible work of God. Oh the unexpected blessings that the sinfulness of many should be hidden in one righteous person.

While the righteousness of one should justify many sinners. Having demonstrated therefore in the former time the powerlessness of our nature to obtain life. And having now revealed the savior's power to save even the powerless.

He willed that for both these reasons we should believe in his goodness and regard him as nurse, father, teacher, counselor, healer, mind, light, honor, glory, strength, and life. And not be anxious about food and clothing.

Now that's good preaching. But what you need to hear is hopefully what you heard him preaching was justification by faith. The imputed righteousness of Christ. Our imputation of our sins to Christ. He bears our sins.

His righteousness is imputed to us. And when is this? Oh that's something Martin Luther made up. No. This is about 1400 years before Martin Luther. So Luther was simply banging a drum that had been built a long time ago and it may have become somewhat neglected over the years because of tradition.

But it wasn't a new musical instrument. He was presenting. We'll have some questions at the end. Diagnetus. D-I-O-G-N-E-T-U-S. Diagnetus. So these doctrines and teachings, we're often told sola scriptura, sola fide, all these things came along at a later point in time.

Fact of the matter is you dig enough, you do enough research, you do enough reading of original sources, and you discover that that is not the case. So check that one out, especially his presentation on the folly of idolatry.

It's really, really good reading. It's a whole lot better than almost anything that you'll be watching on TV other than that tonight. I assure you of that. So let's talk about someone whose name we do know.

Ignatius of Antioch. Ignatius of Antioch. He was the bishop of the church at Antioch, and of course we know that was a major Christian center. We see it in the book of Acts and so on and so forth, a very early church.

Ignatius of Antioch was martyred somewhere between 107 and 108 AD, so right at the beginning of the second century. So he is living in the decades right after the last apostle. So it's very early on in the history of the church.

And once he's arrested, he is basically dragged along, willingly. He wants to go, but he goes all the way from the area around Antioch all the way to Rome. So it's a fairly decent trip. Even today it's a fairly decent trip.

It was a longer trip back then, obviously, because he was so well known that they wanted to take him to Rome for his execution. And along the way he wrote seven epistles to churches and to one individual, Polycarp, as he is going.

Now there's some fake epistles that were written later and had his name put on it, but there are seven genuine epistles, and I recommend them to your reading. They are fascinating. We went through all of them in the classroom teaching tomorrow in Germany.

We've already gone through all of Ignatius' stuff. There's just some tremendous citations. I'll only share two of them with you right now that are just fascinating. This, I think, is one of my favorite quotations from all of church history, and this is how it goes.

There is one physician—this is written to the church at Ephesus, by the way—there is one physician of flesh and of spirit, generate and ingenerate, God and man, true life and death, of Mary and of God, first passable and then impassable, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now that's written before 107 AD. Now if you're missing what the significance of that is, if you go to any university, college in the Western world today, you will be told that the belief in the deity of Christ, belief in the doctrine of the Trinity, all of these things developed over time and then finally took shape in 325 AD at the Council of Nicaea.

But this wasn't what the early church believed. But here is one of the very earliest—I mean, the earliest fragments we have of Christian writings outside the New Testament are something called the Didache, Clement's letter from Rome to the church at Corinth, and Ignatius.

These are our earliest fragments outside of the New Testament itself, okay? And so in this early, early, early material, you have a highly developed what's called Christology, doctrine of Christ. One physician of flesh and of spirit, generate and ingenerate, God and man—that's as close to saying the God-man as you're going to get—true life and death of Mary and of God, first passable and then impassable, Jesus Christ our Lord.

That—I have to wonder in how many evangelical churches today if on a Sunday morning I just grabbed people out of the line as they were leaving the church after shaking the pastor's hand, if anybody still does that anymore, and said, give me in one sentence a meaningful description of Christ.

How many would do any better than Ignatius of Antioch did around 107 AD? Not many. Not many. And people say, well, you know, but they never thought of anything called the Trinity. Listen to this. Also in the same epistle to the Ephesians.

You are stones of a temple, which was beforehand prepared for a building of God the Father, being raised to the height through the engine of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, and using as a rope the Holy Spirit.

So here's the church, and the church is a building prepared by God the Father, raised to the height through the engine of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, using as a rope the Holy Spirit. It's a beautiful analogy, but it would make no sense if you were, for example, a Jehovah's Witness.

Let's try to interpret this as a Jehovah's Witness. So the building of God the Father, who is Jehovah, being raised to the height through the engine of Michael the Archangel, which is actually not the cross because Jesus didn't die on a cross, he died on a torture stake, and using as a rope the impersonal active force like water.

Yeah, that doesn't work at all, does it? No. It would be a mess. The putting together of Father, Son, and Spirit, which is what you find all the way through the New Testament as well, demonstrates a fundamental foundational belief about the relationship that those divine persons bear to one another and their role in the work of the gospel.

And so again, beginning of the second century, the decades right after the death of the last apostle, in-depth theology of Christ, in-depth theology of salvation, and this is being written by a man who's going to his death.

He's not writing systematic theologies to these groups. He can assume that they're going to understand the language he's using. And so that means he's assuming that there's already this level of knowledge amongst everybody who's going to be hearing these letters that he's writing to them.

So Ignatius of Antioch sealed his testimony with his blood. Dying as a martyr does not mean that what you believe is true. But when someone is willing to die for something, you better listen to what they had to say to see why they ended up believing what they believed.

People have died as martyrs for falsehoods. No question about that. But when someone is willing to give their life, as the early Christians were willing to give theirs, you need to listen to what they were saying.

Now there's all sorts of other people that we could talk about in that early period, but we only have so much time. And so I wanted to go to another martyr. We could, for example, talk about Justin Martyr, who was an apologist and a defender of the Christian faith around the year 150.

Now obviously when he was born, his mommy did not name him Justin Martyr. That obviously came later and tells you how he met his end as well. He'd be fascinating. Tertullian and all sorts of other folks.

But down in South Africa, where I've got a lot of friends, I'll never get to see them again either, but down in Africa in Carthage. So Carthage, as you know, one of the great stories is the battles between Carthage and Rome for preeminence in the Mediterranean and things like that.

And Hannibal and his elephants. I mean, history is fascinating stuff. It's so sad that most modern people are just bored out of their minds by the study of history. Well, they didn't have iPhones, so why should we care about them?

This is sad. They didn't need iPhones to remind them to do everything that they did. Sort of makes us wonder about us. But anyway, Carthage had eventually been subdued by Rome. And there was a very wealthy, very powerful man by the name of Cyprian.

Cyprian was very wealthy. He was dressed in purple. Purple clothing in that day was extremely expensive. It was a sign of great authority and position in the culture and society. Well trained in rhetoric and well read and things like that.

And as an adult, as an older adult, not older, older, but probably in his 40s, he heard the message of Christ. Now this is during the period of time where Christianity is still called a religio illicita, an illicit or illegal religion, all right?

He hears the message of Christ, and he bows the knee to Christ. He only lives a few years as a Christian before he is martyred. By the way, when I look back upon these men, and I recognize that many of them lived a short period of time in Christ, I tend to be much more gracious toward their theology than I would be someone who is not under persecution and has 40 years to study.

You know what I mean? There are people, I'll go ahead and name a name, Dave Hunt. Dave Hunt, I debated him. Well, I didn't debate him. I sort of, well, you know what happened. You can read the book, and you can go back and listen to the recordings.

But Dave was one of those folks who held everybody in the past to his modern standard and was willing to just chuck people into the flames of hell if they didn't look like him and express everything the way he did.

He really had a very, I think, surface-level approach to church history, and I've tried to avoid that as one looking back and wanting to learn from these people, and at the same time recognizing that not everybody in the past has had everything exactly right, and I don't either.

That's one of the reasons that I want to be gracious toward them. Anyway, you know, Keith Green. Anybody, Keith Green fans? If you're not a Keith Green fan, I'm not going to speak to you ever again. But Keith Green was only a Christian for like seven years, and people pick on his theology and stuff like that, and I'm going, how long have you been a Christian again?

Oh, okay, well, then stop picking on somebody who was only a Christian for seven years. Cyprian, likewise, for a brief number of years, he did not want to become the bishop of Carthage, but he was so generous.

He just, he was a wealthy man, and so he began using all of his worldly wealth to support the church and to support the poor and to do these types of things. And there was persecution going on, and unfortunately, right at the time that he becomes bishop of Carthage is when the Decian persecution begins, and it's extremely severe.

And so he actually flees Carthage. This was a big issue in the early church. Should you flee? Should you? There is, it caused tremendous difficulties in the church, and for a while ran the church by epistle from outside of Carthage.

That didn't work out too well. He returned. He eventually was arrested, and in 254, laid his head upon a stone, and a Roman soldier cut his head off with a sword. During that period of time, he wrote an epistle that I would highly recommend to all of you.

I think it's 73 off the top of my head. I'd have to look it back up again. Epistle 73. Probably can find it on ccel .org if you look for it. He wrote an epistle to Christians who had been imprisoned by Rome in the mines.

Now, can you imagine what it was like to work in a mine in North Africa in the middle of the third century, around 253? I don't think there was much in the way of safety protocols, if you know what I mean.

It was probably meant to kill as many people as possible, but they were enslaved for their faith, digging ore for the Roman Empire in mines, knowing that any one of them could get out of that simply by denying Christ.

Just as we have brothers and sisters today in prisons in Islamic countries, that all they have to do would be to say the Shahada. All they have to do would be to confess that Allah is the only God to be worshipped, and Muhammad is his prophet, and they'd be out.

They hold the key to the door that locks them in. They're in the same situation. So he writes to them, and this is one paragraph from his epistle to the Christians in the mines, and I want you to hear what it says.

But that, being first severely beaten with clubs and ill-used, you have begun by sufferings of that kind the glorious firstlings of your confession. It is not a matter to be execrated by us, for a Christian body is not very greatly terrified at clubs, seeing all its hope is in the wood.

The servant of Christ acknowledges the sacrament of his salvation, redeemed by wood to life eternal. He is advanced by wood to the crown. But what wonder if, as gold and silver vessels, you have been committed to the mine that is the home of gold and silver, except that now the nature of the mines is changed, and the places which previously had been accustomed to yield gold and silver have begun to receive them.

Moreover, they have put fetters on your feet, and have bound your blessed limbs, and the temples of God with disgraceful chains, as if the spirit also could be bound with the body, or your gold could be stained by the contact of iron.

To men who are dedicated to God, and attesting their faith with religious courage, such things are ornaments, not chains. Nor do they bind the feet of the Christians for infamy, but glorify them for a crown.

O feet, blessedly bound, which are loose, not by the smith, but by the Lord. O feet, blessedly bound, which are guided to paradise in the way of salvation. O feet, bound for the present time in the world, that they may be always free with the Lord.

O feet, lingering for a while among the fetters and crossbars, but to run quickly to Christ on a glorious road. Let cruelty, either envious or malignant, hold you here in its bonds and chains as long as it will.

From this earth and from these sufferings you shall speedily come to the kingdom of heaven. The body is not cherished in the mines with couch and cushions, but it is cherished with the refreshment and solace of Christ.

The frame, wearied with labors, lies prostrate on the ground, but it is no penalty to lie down with Christ. Your limbs, unbathed, are foul and disfigured with filth and dirt, but within they are spiritually cleansed, although without the flesh is defiled.

There the bread is scarce, but man liveth not by bread alone, but by the word of God. Shivering, you want clothing, but he who puts on Christ is both abundantly clothed and adorned. The hair of your half-shorn beard seems repulsive, but since Christ is the head of the man, anything whatever must needs become that head which is illustrious on account of Christ's name.

All that deformity, detestable and foul to Gentiles, with what splendor shall it be recompensed? This temporal and brief suffering, how shall it be exchanged for the reward of a bright and eternal honor when, according to the word of the blessed apostle, the Lord shall change the body of our humiliation that it may be fashioned like to the body of his brightness?

Cyprian wasn't pretending that these people were not in chains, that they were not being beaten. He was not in any way minimizing the sufferings that were theirs, but every word he communicated echoed the apostle Paul's statement, the sufferings of this life are not to be compared to the glories that he revealed to us.

And if he had finished his days on cushions of comfort, that might impact how we read his word. But he willfully laid his head upon a block and had a Roman soldier sever that head from his body. With still many years he could have lived.

That changes how you interpret his words. He lived what he said. I don't know any of those people. Well, actually, the beginning of the letter does mention just a few names of the people who were in those chains in the mines, but we don't know the vast majority.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I think about someday meeting some of those people, and I have to think about and feel ashamed by the things I complain about in my life, the things I've gone to the Lord.

Lord, why have you allowed this to happen to me? Why have you allowed that to happen to me? And then I think about all those who've gone before, and I think about those in the mines, and I go, what do I have to complain about?

And I've preached sermons on the the gem of Christian contentment, the one thing we never ever talk about, because in the United States, you're not supposed to be content, so you're always buying new stuff, right?