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215. had witness borne, to them through their faith, received not the promise, God hav ing provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” God nowhere promises that His faithful saints shall never suffer because o f their faithfulness to Him. On the contrary, He tells us that “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer per secution.” And He tells us that it is a blessed privilege, to be coveted, not a mis fortune to be avoided, to suffer persecution for Him. He says in Matt. 5 :10-12, “ Blessed (not unfortunate) are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake : fo r theirs is the kingdom o f Heaven. Blessed' are ye, when men shall revile you, and per secute you, and shall say all manner o f evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven ; for so persecuted they the.prophets which were before you.” All persecution for Christ’s sake pays. It brings- far more o f blessing than is commensurate with what we suffer. No one in all history ever suffered more for the name o f Jesus Christ than Paul the Apostle, and yet he did not grumble. He was not at all stag- ' gered in his faith. Hè counted it a priv ilege to thus suffer. He wrote, “ Our fight affliction, which is but for a moment, work- eth for us a far more exceeding and eter nal, weight o f glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen : for (he things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor.. 4:17, 18). And he wrote again, “If so be that we suffer With Him that we may be also glorified together, for I reckon that the sufferings o f this present time (even the awful sufferings o f the Armenians) are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed; in us.” The Arme-, nians are not to'be pitied' they are to be congratulated. To suffer a few hours, or a few days, or even for years and be rewarded by an eternity o f glory is cer tainly a good interest, about which no intel ligent person would complain.
any man, as his throat is too small to swal low a man. This only needs to be said in ' reply, that the account in the original does not say a “whale.” Furthermore, it is true only o f certain species of whales that they cannot swallow a man. There are other kinds o f whales that not only can but have swallowed men, and in at least one well authenticated instance a man was swallowed by a whale, remained in the whale some time and afterward the whale was caught, brought on board, cut open, and the man taken out alive and lived for years afterward. I am not sure but he is living yet. But as far as that is concerned even if this was naturally impossible, it would be supernaturally pos sible. Jonah might have died in the fish’s belly and God could have raised him from the dead. The old infidel objections to the historical character o f the story of Jo'nah were long ago exploded by real sci entific discoveries, and our destructive crit ics who are trying to explain away the statements o f the Book o f Jonah and the words o f our Lord, and to interpret history as allegory, are simply not up-to-date. - I f God is good and answers prayer, why are the Armenians, faithful followers o f Christ, permitted to suffer so terribly? The answer to your question you will find in the 11th chapter o f Hebrews, and in Matt. 5 :1Q-12. In Hebrews 11 we have a long list o f heroes o f faith, some of whom got deliverance from peril and death by their faith, and others equally worthy who refused deliverance of the lower sort and got a deliverance o f a higher sort. They did not accept deliverance from death in order that they “might obtain a better resurrection.” They had trial o f “mock- ings and scourgings, yea, moreover o f bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword: they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being des titute, afflicted, evil entreated (o f whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves, and the holes o f the earth. And these all, having
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