Transcript: Episode 0090
This transcript:
- Was machine generated.
- Has not been checked for errors.
- May not be entirely accurate.
WEBVTT 00:00:37.391 --> 00:00:39.711Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.711 --> 00:00:40.751 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.751 --> 00:00:41.831 Mahler. 00:00:41.831 --> 00:00:44.251 And I'm still, whoa. 00:00:44.251 --> 00:00:48.531 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be talking about persecution and perseverance. 00:00:48.531 --> 00:00:55.811 We talked last week about loyalty and specifically when loyalty is not due, when duty doesn't attach. 00:00:55.811 --> 00:00:59.291 This week, we're not really talking about honor as it's connected to these things. 00:00:59.291 --> 00:01:14.531 So we already decided we're going to title this one, persecution and perseverance, because as we look at the state of the church, as we look at the state of the world, as we look at the state of many of our lives, it's clear that there is a persecution that is taking place in isolated areas. 00:01:14.531 --> 00:01:19.931 And more broadly, there's persecution at large that we're collectively facing. 00:01:19.931 --> 00:01:26.151 And at the largest scale, there's persecution that's been going on for as long as there's been a church. 00:01:26.151 --> 00:01:35.391 And so today, we're going to be focusing very heavily on Scripture, on looking at the places where persecution occurs. 00:01:35.391 --> 00:01:38.931 From what quarters does that persecution come? 00:01:38.931 --> 00:01:41.811 And then how do Christians persevere? 00:01:41.811 --> 00:01:49.871 Not only in the faith, but simply, well, it is persevering in the faith, but remaining in the faith means also persevering in the moment. 00:01:49.871 --> 00:01:54.571 So it's not simply a question of saying the Lord's Prayer and confessing the creeds. 00:01:54.571 --> 00:02:00.371 However you want to specifically define maintaining your faith, draw the line wherever you want. 00:02:00.371 --> 00:02:06.091 There's more to perseverance than that, because to some degree, it's easy for that to be lip service. 00:02:06.091 --> 00:02:13.271 The actual perseverance is continuing to show up, even when it doesn't look like it has anything to do with Christianity. 00:02:13.271 --> 00:02:23.451 So we're going to talk today about the Old Testament, the New Testament, touch a little bit on history and the Church, but overall, the point that we want to make here today is not to bury the lead. 00:02:23.451 --> 00:02:24.751 I think we all have a habit. 00:02:24.751 --> 00:02:31.671 I certainly in the past have had a habit, which I was taught, of reading the Bible as a collection of stories. 00:02:31.671 --> 00:02:42.711 You have these old guys in the olden times doing olden things in isolated, culturally specific places and circumstances. 00:02:42.711 --> 00:02:49.691 And yes, we should emulate some tiny portion of whatever they did right, and we should certainly condemn whatever they did wrong. 00:02:49.691 --> 00:02:52.571 And the Bible tells us what those are most of the time. 00:02:52.571 --> 00:02:54.731 But we don't look at them as human beings. 00:02:55.371 --> 00:03:03.731 Over the last year especially, as I read the prophets and the things that happened to them, I see them much more as men. 00:03:03.731 --> 00:03:08.151 I see them as guys who had a really miserable job. 00:03:08.151 --> 00:03:09.831 And I read between the lines. 00:03:09.831 --> 00:03:12.491 I put myself in the shoes of one of those prophets. 00:03:12.491 --> 00:03:18.071 Not that I think I'm a prophet, but like having been abused for some time, those things stand out to me a little more. 00:03:18.071 --> 00:03:21.831 You know, we all get sensitive to whatever crap has happened to you. 00:03:21.831 --> 00:03:26.731 You tend to be a little more sensitive when it pops up in whatever circumstances. 00:03:26.731 --> 00:03:37.351 And so, when I see someone who is sent by God to speak to people and they try to kill him and he runs away and God says, and you have to go back, and the prophet says, no, they're going to kill me. 00:03:37.351 --> 00:03:38.271 They hate me. 00:03:38.271 --> 00:03:40.071 God says, yeah, just go do it anyway. 00:03:40.071 --> 00:03:42.951 You see that pattern happen over and over again. 00:03:42.951 --> 00:03:51.211 And I have begun to have a great deal more empathy for the man sitting in a cave or sitting out in the desert or whatever, being fed by ravens. 00:03:51.291 --> 00:03:55.171 And it's just, you got to feel for the guy. 00:03:55.171 --> 00:03:59.251 I think we don't necessarily look at them even as human beings. 00:03:59.251 --> 00:04:00.271 It's like, oh, he's a prophet. 00:04:00.271 --> 00:04:02.511 And so like, that's all he did. 00:04:02.511 --> 00:04:07.711 Well, even if his entire life was devoted to prophecy, at least what was revealed of it, he was a man. 00:04:07.711 --> 00:04:09.331 He had to eat, he had to sleep. 00:04:09.331 --> 00:04:10.611 He was stressed out. 00:04:10.611 --> 00:04:23.371 And so I was talking to somebody earlier this week about history and I said that I hate how much, I hate generally the opinions of people who spend a ton of time studying history because they make precisely this error. 00:04:23.371 --> 00:04:26.271 It's not that learning history is bad itself. 00:04:26.271 --> 00:04:36.591 It's that when you reduce whatever has happened in the past, whether it's in the Bible or Napoleonic Wars, you take your pick, wherever you want to draw your focus historically. 00:04:36.591 --> 00:04:54.451 When you collapse it into names and dates and locations on a map and troop counts and whatever, when you make it a numerical calculation that can be put on a spreadsheet and on a timeline, you strip the humanity from those moments. 00:04:54.451 --> 00:05:00.411 And the problem when people are doing that with historical analysis is that those were human beings. 00:05:00.411 --> 00:05:07.511 Regardless of what they're doing, regardless of the moral tenor, regardless of even the outcome, they were men in a place at a time. 00:05:07.511 --> 00:05:09.371 They had imperfect knowledge. 00:05:09.371 --> 00:05:11.511 They had impure motives. 00:05:11.511 --> 00:05:12.831 They were not perfect. 00:05:12.831 --> 00:05:20.131 And so we try to read back everything that we know from here into a situation where they didn't know all those things. 00:05:20.131 --> 00:05:36.091 And then the problem with that, besides the fact that when you do that, you no longer actually understand the object you're looking at, to then extrapolate that incomplete, incoherent view of how people behave into our own circumstances, just if flat out fails. 00:05:36.091 --> 00:05:48.451 Because you try to map the quantities of troops or the direction or the weather or whatever, and say, well, here's what's going to happen in Ukraine in the winter of 2025, because this happened a hundred years ago. 00:05:48.451 --> 00:05:56.911 It's the wrong lesson, because you're not looking at the human beings and the stress that they were under, the fact that they were getting no sleep, the fact that their families were starving. 00:05:56.911 --> 00:06:01.731 Whatever was going wrong, they were human beings suffering in human ways. 00:06:01.731 --> 00:06:07.131 The good, the bad, the victories, the defeats have a human cost internally on every man. 00:06:07.171 --> 00:06:19.631 Some things weigh on you, and I think when we look at the suffering and the perseverance and the persecution in the church and in history, we make the same error, and that's the connection. 00:06:19.631 --> 00:06:25.051 Whether you're looking at historical events or biblical events, which are the same thing, Scripture is history. 00:06:25.051 --> 00:06:30.391 It's the oldest account of human history that we have, and it's inspired by God, so it's accurate. 00:06:30.391 --> 00:06:35.351 And yet, it's just very frustrating that we look at these things and we just try to... 00:06:35.351 --> 00:06:40.911 It's kind of the hermeneutic version of proof texting, just whatever you wanted from one little corner. 00:06:40.911 --> 00:06:47.191 You don't look at the prophet who was afraid to go back out and talk to the crowd because they wanted to kill him. 00:06:47.191 --> 00:06:48.851 And God said, no, go do it anyway. 00:06:48.851 --> 00:06:50.091 Don't worry about it. 00:06:50.091 --> 00:06:52.091 Over and over again. 00:06:52.091 --> 00:06:53.831 Those men had to do something. 00:06:53.831 --> 00:06:55.191 They had to persevere. 00:06:55.191 --> 00:06:59.991 They were persevering in the faith in a way that at the time was ugly. 00:06:59.991 --> 00:07:00.871 It was difficult. 00:07:01.371 --> 00:07:07.311 And the story that we're trying to convey today is that that's not isolated in history. 00:07:07.311 --> 00:07:08.511 That's not olden time stuff. 00:07:08.511 --> 00:07:10.611 It's not just Bible stuff. 00:07:10.611 --> 00:07:15.671 This is what the Church looks like in all times and in all places. 00:07:15.671 --> 00:07:21.131 Wherever the elect exists, there will be men persecuting the elect. 00:07:21.131 --> 00:07:23.751 And it doesn't matter if it was before the Church age or after. 00:07:23.751 --> 00:07:26.271 That distinction has its place. 00:07:26.271 --> 00:07:33.011 But these were Christians 4,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, 1,000 years ago and today. 00:07:33.011 --> 00:07:38.051 These were all Christians because they all had the faith of Abraham and the promise that God had made. 00:07:38.051 --> 00:07:47.691 This is important because when you look at who is being persecuted and who is doing the persecution, it's inside the same house. 00:07:47.691 --> 00:07:59.811 So we're going to talk about a number of passages in Scripture today that, frankly, until I brought this theme, this idea, to the scriptural passages that I looked up, I had forgotten how much this was there. 00:07:59.811 --> 00:08:08.071 I had sort of bought into the view that we're all basically taught that, you know, the persecution in the New Testament, the Old Testament was like, the king was wicked, Ahab was wicked. 00:08:08.071 --> 00:08:10.131 And so that's political, right? 00:08:10.131 --> 00:08:12.871 If the king doing is political, that's not inside the church. 00:08:12.871 --> 00:08:13.571 Nonsense. 00:08:13.571 --> 00:08:17.571 When you look at that story, it was absolutely the church persecuting the church. 00:08:17.571 --> 00:08:22.171 In the New Testament, like, oh, well, the Pharisees did it, the Sadducees did it, or the crowds did it. 00:08:22.171 --> 00:08:23.851 It was the church doing it. 00:08:23.851 --> 00:08:26.331 It was the people who called themselves believers. 00:08:27.271 --> 00:08:39.711 And the formation of what we called the church in the first century AD was the separation of those in that moment of those who claimed to be believers, but were not, and those who were, in fact, believers. 00:08:39.711 --> 00:08:42.511 And they demonstrated by their perseverance in the faith. 00:08:42.511 --> 00:08:55.251 But in the moment, in those synagogues, in those locations that are described in scripture, and later on in history, what we very clearly find is that the men who were persecuting called themselves believers too. 00:08:56.251 --> 00:09:03.451 When Saul stood there and approvingly held the coats of the men who were stoning Stephen to death, he was a believer. 00:09:03.451 --> 00:09:06.791 He wasn't a believer in the true God, like that was the division. 00:09:06.791 --> 00:09:09.851 But he was there for the Church of his day. 00:09:09.851 --> 00:09:21.191 That was an official, not formal, but it was very much a proceeding of Church discipline to stone that man to death because he had blasphemed, because he said he saw the Son of God in heaven. 00:09:21.191 --> 00:09:31.851 After incidentally having preached a sermon, where he described every evil thing the Jews had done for a thousand years, up to murdering Christ, and they murdered him for it on the spot. 00:09:31.851 --> 00:09:33.471 That was Church discipline. 00:09:33.471 --> 00:09:39.451 He was a martyr, he was a witness, and that was an entirely internal Church matter. 00:09:39.451 --> 00:09:40.791 It wasn't the state. 00:09:40.791 --> 00:09:44.351 It wasn't the Romans coming along and being mean to the believers. 00:09:44.351 --> 00:09:46.431 No, that was inside. 00:09:46.431 --> 00:09:51.111 That was one man saying, I believe in God and I'm here to serve God, doing it to another man. 00:09:51.711 --> 00:09:59.251 And that's the message that we want to demonstrate and to make the case for today, because that's mostly what we're seeing now. 00:09:59.251 --> 00:10:05.971 We are going to increasingly see persecution in and of the Church by the Church. 00:10:05.971 --> 00:10:15.731 It will be men who say they are Christians and they're doing this in the name of God who do the bad things, who do the worst things I have ever personally witnessed in my entire life. 00:10:15.731 --> 00:10:24.151 I've seen some heinous crap and I've never seen anything remotely like what I've seen from men who call themselves Christians in the last two years. 00:10:24.151 --> 00:10:35.091 If we think that the Bible is just old-timey stuff and those are sequestered in the past and they don't actually apply to us as a continuum, we're not going to get the message. 00:10:35.091 --> 00:10:42.071 And so we're going to go through a bunch of passages today to try to convey as best we can that it's the same picture. 00:10:42.071 --> 00:10:44.851 There's not a division of millennia. 00:10:44.851 --> 00:10:48.051 There's not a division of anything except for the two sides. 00:10:48.411 --> 00:10:50.851 And they're inside the Church. 00:10:50.851 --> 00:10:55.211 The goats and the sheep are collected together under one roof. 00:10:55.211 --> 00:10:58.811 And that's how God says things will be until the last day. 00:10:58.811 --> 00:11:03.851 When we talk about sheep and goats, we mostly focus on, oh, it's the unbelievers outside the Church. 00:11:03.851 --> 00:11:04.991 Those are the goats. 00:11:04.991 --> 00:11:06.031 Those are the bad people. 00:11:06.031 --> 00:11:08.011 They're not morally justified. 00:11:08.011 --> 00:11:09.351 Not like us. 00:11:09.351 --> 00:11:11.551 And then inside the Church, you have all the sheep. 00:11:11.551 --> 00:11:13.471 Except that's not remotely true. 00:11:13.471 --> 00:11:15.711 The Church is full of goats too. 00:11:16.551 --> 00:11:17.711 Not ontologically. 00:11:17.711 --> 00:11:23.071 You know, the definition of the Church in one sense is strictly the elect, only the elect. 00:11:23.071 --> 00:11:27.671 And then the intermingling can only possibly be undone on Judgment Day. 00:11:27.671 --> 00:11:30.451 There are parables about the sower and the reaping. 00:11:30.451 --> 00:11:37.431 And the only way to separate the wheat from the chaff and the goats from the sheep is to wait until the day of harvest. 00:11:37.431 --> 00:11:40.091 Because to do so beforehand would destroy the whole thing. 00:11:40.091 --> 00:11:40.691 Why? 00:11:40.691 --> 00:11:42.291 Because they're all in the one place. 00:11:42.291 --> 00:11:43.271 And that's where we are today. 00:11:43.851 --> 00:11:55.731 We are all mashed together, wicked, reprobate, demonic men alongside believers, all saying that they confess the same God, all saying that they serve the same Jesus Christ. 00:11:55.731 --> 00:12:03.051 If you believe that everyone who says he's Christian is Christian, you're going to be in a situation where you can be destroyed. 00:12:03.051 --> 00:12:09.391 And we're doing this episode today because this persecution is rapidly ramping up inside the churches. 00:12:09.391 --> 00:12:16.271 There are numerous witch hunts today as we're recording of anyone who has ever said anything nice about Stone Choir. 00:12:16.271 --> 00:12:20.451 Like us, hate us, whatever, at least listen and figure out why you hate us. 00:12:20.451 --> 00:12:22.071 Most people won't do that. 00:12:22.071 --> 00:12:26.051 They will hear that we're bad and then decide it without ever listening. 00:12:26.051 --> 00:12:29.011 The funny thing is that when people actually listen, like, what was the big deal? 00:12:29.011 --> 00:12:32.071 People say we sound like NPR and they're not wrong. 00:12:32.071 --> 00:12:36.071 Like we're mild-mannered, like this is not bomb throwing. 00:12:36.631 --> 00:12:40.951 We're making scriptural cases for things and it changes people's minds. 00:12:40.951 --> 00:12:43.691 We're not playing tricks and that is what is dangerous. 00:12:43.691 --> 00:12:46.191 And so this is not an episode about us. 00:12:46.191 --> 00:12:49.831 This is an episode about the Church, but it's a microcosm. 00:12:49.831 --> 00:12:51.571 It's typological. 00:12:51.571 --> 00:13:00.791 The things that are being done today to some of the people who listen to Stone Choir, even if they don't like us, just having listened is enough for you to be driven from your Church. 00:13:00.791 --> 00:13:04.651 And we want to warn you that there are men who want to hurt you for that. 00:13:04.831 --> 00:13:09.411 And that alone, if you will not publicly disavow us, they want you dead. 00:13:09.411 --> 00:13:12.591 And that sounds like a very extreme thing. 00:13:12.591 --> 00:13:14.771 Some people get it and some people don't. 00:13:14.771 --> 00:13:19.811 Having been on the other side of that hatred, I promise you it's not reserved for Corey and me. 00:13:19.811 --> 00:13:24.691 It is reserved for the truth that we are discussing because it's straight from Scripture. 00:13:24.691 --> 00:13:26.531 We're not making anything up. 00:13:26.531 --> 00:13:28.011 You have to judge that for yourself. 00:13:28.011 --> 00:13:31.191 If we're evil and wicked and twisting everything, figure out how. 00:13:31.191 --> 00:13:32.551 How is it that we've twisted Scripture? 00:13:32.631 --> 00:13:36.271 Because you need to be able to defend yourself against wolves. 00:13:36.271 --> 00:13:38.351 That's a lot of what we talk about here. 00:13:38.351 --> 00:13:43.211 Saying this is what a wolf sounds like, this is what a shepherd sounds like. 00:13:43.211 --> 00:13:48.911 And if you believe that we're evil, then figure out how we're tricking people because we're doing it really well. 00:13:48.911 --> 00:13:53.071 And no one has yet to make a case against that. 00:13:53.071 --> 00:13:57.711 The persecution, if we were evil men, then it wouldn't be properly persecution. 00:13:57.711 --> 00:13:58.811 It would be justice. 00:13:58.811 --> 00:14:00.611 That's of course the framing. 00:14:00.971 --> 00:14:03.411 That's always the framing in these circumstances. 00:14:03.411 --> 00:14:04.391 Yeah, they deserved it. 00:14:04.391 --> 00:14:08.331 Those guys were absolutely evil and wicked and has nothing to do with Jesus whatsoever. 00:14:08.331 --> 00:14:13.791 The final calculus is in determining that, which is scriptural and that which is against God. 00:14:13.791 --> 00:14:16.591 And that's why we make these cases from scripture. 00:14:16.591 --> 00:14:27.111 Either we're lying and we're twisting scripture, or we're saying the same thing that God says, and we're pointing out that there are discontinuities in our churches, in our pastors, in our doctrines, in our lives. 00:14:27.111 --> 00:14:32.731 And those discontinuities, if they're there, if we're not liars, then those are caused for repentance. 00:14:32.731 --> 00:14:34.691 Go back and listen to the repentance episode. 00:14:34.691 --> 00:14:40.971 When you realize that you have been in error, you have sinned, repenting is not feeling bad. 00:14:40.971 --> 00:14:44.171 Repenting is turning away from your own wickedness. 00:14:44.171 --> 00:14:48.531 It's saying, this thing that I did was disgusting, I rejected, I'm not doing it again. 00:14:48.531 --> 00:14:54.371 I am going the opposite direction, and you should come with me, because I don't want you to be evil like I was. 00:14:54.371 --> 00:14:55.511 That's repentance. 00:14:55.511 --> 00:15:00.591 It's throwing yourself under the bus and throwing yourself on God's mercy, and He'll forgive you. 00:15:00.591 --> 00:15:04.251 He will absolutely forgive you when you call on Him for forgiveness. 00:15:04.251 --> 00:15:06.211 But repentance is more than feeling bad. 00:15:06.211 --> 00:15:08.471 It's about doing the opposite. 00:15:08.471 --> 00:15:18.291 When anyone comes along and illustrates that the thing that you were doing yesterday turns out it was bad, nobody ever told you, you didn't know, but it turns out it was actually against what God says. 00:15:18.291 --> 00:15:21.711 The Christian response is, I had no idea. 00:15:21.711 --> 00:15:23.791 I didn't know that eating seed oils would hurt me. 00:15:24.351 --> 00:15:27.331 I didn't know that nylon underwear would hurt me. 00:15:27.331 --> 00:15:29.591 Now that I know, I'm going to live a different life. 00:15:29.591 --> 00:15:35.131 You know, those are trivial examples, but only because they're not moral, but the damage is just the same. 00:15:35.131 --> 00:15:39.411 They're these things that are intrinsically either good or they're harmful. 00:15:39.411 --> 00:15:45.731 Even if you don't know, you can know nothing about nutrition or clothing or anything, and you can harm yourself by doing the wrong thing. 00:15:45.731 --> 00:15:47.871 The same is always true spiritually. 00:15:47.871 --> 00:15:57.431 The persecution that's going to occur in the Church and is occurring today is in those places where the Church for decades, not centuries, and that's one of the problems. 00:15:57.431 --> 00:16:00.731 Most of these things we're talking about now, they're not century disagreements. 00:16:00.731 --> 00:16:02.731 They're decadeal disagreements. 00:16:02.731 --> 00:16:07.251 That is itself one of the arguments against this modern wickedness. 00:16:07.251 --> 00:16:17.351 When you look at these things that have changed, and you point out that someone who lived 200 years ago is in heaven, even if I agree with him, the persecution is turned on. 00:16:17.351 --> 00:16:19.871 They're saying you can't believe what people believe 200 years ago. 00:16:20.331 --> 00:16:23.351 You have to believe the new thing or you're going to hell. 00:16:23.351 --> 00:16:35.811 All by itself, any reasonable understanding of logic and the very most basic scriptural understanding must lead one to believe that someone who says that is not from God. 00:16:35.811 --> 00:16:36.671 God is unchanging. 00:16:36.671 --> 00:16:37.811 His word is unchanging. 00:16:37.811 --> 00:16:39.831 His commands are unchanging. 00:16:39.831 --> 00:16:43.731 The faith inherited is unchanging. 00:16:43.731 --> 00:16:55.231 What we have inherited, what we have been taught, cannot be from God if it's fickle, if it's 80 years old, or 50 years old, or 20 years old, as some of these new teachings that are coming in. 00:16:55.231 --> 00:17:01.671 There are things that were illegal in the 90s, but today we're told we'll go to hell if we say they're wrong. 00:17:01.671 --> 00:17:13.451 These tests have to be applied rationally and out loud and in ways that are going to divide men against each other because we've gotten them wrong and we've done it with a clean conscience. 00:17:13.451 --> 00:17:21.091 And so when the Church begins to reorient itself, when believers begin to say, you know what, I was misled. 00:17:21.091 --> 00:17:23.151 My grandmother got rid of head coverings. 00:17:23.151 --> 00:17:26.711 I now think that I should be covering my head if I'm a woman. 00:17:26.711 --> 00:17:37.651 That turn back towards the things that God commands illustrates plainly that the last 60 to 80 years of what has happened in the West is anti-Christian. 00:17:37.651 --> 00:17:40.551 And the response is persecution. 00:17:40.551 --> 00:17:43.551 It is hatred, bottomless hatred. 00:17:43.551 --> 00:17:49.271 It's directed at anyone who will dare to say, the thing that my grandparents believed, I believe too. 00:17:49.271 --> 00:17:51.431 Anyone who does that is in danger. 00:17:51.431 --> 00:17:53.091 They're not in danger from the state. 00:17:53.091 --> 00:17:54.551 Like, that's going on too. 00:17:54.551 --> 00:17:57.991 But the point of this episode, that's a minor part of it. 00:17:57.991 --> 00:18:04.651 Most of the persecution of the faithful is going to come from those who call themselves faithful. 00:18:04.651 --> 00:18:05.951 What better place for it? 00:18:05.951 --> 00:18:09.531 And as we're going to illustrate today, it's exactly what Scripture says is going to take place. 00:18:11.811 --> 00:18:26.571 When we mention persecution and martyrdom and related matters, some of you undoubtedly will think of possibly the most famous statement by Tertullian, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. 00:18:27.931 --> 00:18:31.411 But is that statement actually true? 00:18:31.411 --> 00:18:37.251 And similar to some degree to the answer one must give to the question, is baptism necessary? 00:18:38.331 --> 00:18:40.971 The answer is yes, but no. 00:18:42.851 --> 00:18:51.891 And the reason for that is that are martyrs necessary in a sense, or at very least, are they useful? 00:18:51.891 --> 00:18:55.711 Do they help to spread the word, God's truth? 00:18:55.711 --> 00:18:58.291 The answer to that obviously is yes. 00:18:58.291 --> 00:19:02.351 Woe certainly mentioned several martyrs in his opening. 00:19:02.351 --> 00:19:04.851 Stephen, of course, being one of the chief among them. 00:19:06.271 --> 00:19:12.031 Did his blood, for instance, help to spread God's word, help to spread God's truth? 00:19:12.031 --> 00:19:14.851 The answer to that is yes. 00:19:14.851 --> 00:19:21.731 And so, in that case, and to that degree, his blood was indeed a seed of the Church. 00:19:21.731 --> 00:19:24.391 It seeded the Church in the world. 00:19:25.831 --> 00:19:30.291 But persecution does not always grow the Church. 00:19:30.291 --> 00:19:40.071 There are many today, particularly, who will try to argue that where the Church is persecuted in the world, it is growing the most rapidly. 00:19:40.071 --> 00:19:44.571 If you look at the actual data, that does not pan out. 00:19:44.571 --> 00:19:52.951 But we can also look at history, because we have more than just surveys for the last 20, 30, 40 years. 00:19:52.951 --> 00:19:55.751 We have centuries of data on this. 00:19:55.751 --> 00:20:00.071 We can look at the history of the Church in various places at various times. 00:20:00.771 --> 00:20:05.111 Did persecution cause the Church to grow? 00:20:05.111 --> 00:20:08.691 The answer again is yes and no. 00:20:08.691 --> 00:20:16.131 Sometimes when the Church was persecuted, for instance, early on in Rome, the Church grew as a result. 00:20:16.131 --> 00:20:21.371 Sometimes when the Church was persecuted, the Church was all but eradicated. 00:20:21.371 --> 00:20:22.871 There are a number of examples of that. 00:20:22.871 --> 00:20:25.311 It's not a one-off thing. 00:20:25.311 --> 00:20:33.291 For instance, Anatolia, what we today call Turkey, used to be Christian. 00:20:33.291 --> 00:20:39.051