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The Revelation of Jesus Christ
THE MESSAGE TO SMYRNA-THE PERSECUTED CHURCH
Death and destruction reigned during the period for which the church at Smyrna stands. The student of church history will recall that during that period of time-the first and second centuries, to A. D. 316-there transpired the martyr period, when literally thousands and thousands of men and women sealed their faith with their blood. In those days the Christians did not worship in great cathedrals, but they met in places like the catacombs of Rome. Nero and Diocletian, obsessed with a fiendish desire, tried by means of every conceivable invention to wipe the followers of Christ from off the face of the earth. One of the first martyrs was Polycarp. He was the bishop of Smyrna, and his death was the forerunner of that of thou sands. The friends of Polycarp persuaded him to take refuge on a farm, but his persecutors searched him out and arrested him. When they tried to get him to blaspheme the name of his Lord, with a courage born of faith in the Son of God, he answered them, "Eighty and six years have I served my Lord, and He has been my truest Friend. How then can I blaspheme Him who shed His blood to wash away my sins?" They tied him to a stake, and built a fire around him; but long before his suffering body was reduced to ashes, his tri umphant soul was at home with his God! Is it any wonder, then, that our Lord introduces Himself to the church which represents the period of the martyrs, by reminding them that He is "the first and the last," the One who "was dead, and is alive'·? He tells them, "I know thy works, and tribulation. and poverty." It cost something to be a Christian in those days. When the risen Christ says, "I know thy poverty," He does not mean that He sees it from above. He does see it, of course; but because He was the Man of Sorrows, He knows it; He experienced it Himself as He walked the hot, dusty roads of Palestine. He who was rich for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich. (See II Cor. 8 :9.) That
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