Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

14:9-13
in the fact that they keep the commandments of God
and the faith of Jesus. In opposition to all forms of
creature worship, Christians keep the commandments;
they keep the faith. The New Testament knows
nothing of a lawless Christianity, or of a devotion that
denies the objective content of “the faith which was
once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Christianity
demands obedient and faithful perseverance in
the face of opposition. Naturally that has consequences,
not all of them pleasant. St. John’s readers
knew that keeping the faith could well mean their
death. For their sakes he records the next words of the
Voice from heaven, saying, Write: Blessed are the
dead who die in the Lord from now on! By the work
of Christ, heaven has been opened to God’s people.
The limbus patrum, the afterlife abode of the Old
Testament faithful (the “bosom of Abraham” of Luke
16:22), has been unlocked and its inhabitants freed (cf.
1 Pet. 3:19; 4:6). Death is now the entrance to
communion in glory with Christ and the departed
saints. Jesus Christ has delivered us from the ultimate
fear of death; we can say, in the famous lines of John
Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”:
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
The early Christians understood that death had been
conquered by the resurrection of Christ; this theme
recurs repeatedly in their writings. Again and again one
is struck with the note of victory in the attitude of the
martyrs as they faced death. St. Athanasius wrote of
this fact in his famous defense of the Christian faith:
“All the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the
offensive against it and, instead of fearing it, by the sign
of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as on
something dead. Before the divine sojourn of the
Saviour even the holiest of men were afraid of death,
and mourned the dead as those who perish. But now
that the Saviour has raised His body, death is no longer
terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it
underfoot as nothing, and prefer to die rather than to
deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when
they die they do not perish, but live indeed, and
become incorruptible through the resurrection. But
that devil who of old wickedly exulted in death, now
that the pains of death are loosed, he alone it is who
remains truly dead. There is proof of this too; for men
who, before they believe in Christ, think death horrible
and are afraid of it, once they are converted despise it
so completely that they go eagerly to meet it, and
themselves become witnesses of the Saviour’s
resurrection from it. Even children hasten thus to die,
and not men only, but women train themselves by
bodily discipline to meet it. So weak has death become
that even women, who used to be taken in by it, mock
it now as a dead thing robbed of all its strength. Death
has become like a tyrant who has been completely
conquered by the legitimate monarch; bound hand and
foot as he now is, the passers-by jeer at him, hitting him
and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and
rage, because of the king who has conquered him. So
has death been conquered and branded for what it is by
the Saviour on the cross. It is bound hand and foot, all
who are in Christ trample it as they pass and as
witnesses to Him deride it, scoffing and saying, ‘O
Death, where is thy victory? O Grave, where is thy
sting?’” 15
Bishop Eusebius, the great Church historian, was an
eyewitness of many early martyrdoms, and recorded
what often took place when Christians were placed on
trial: “We were witnesses to the most admirable ardor of
mind, and the truly divine energy and alacrity of those
that believed in the Christ of God. For as soon as the
sentence was pronounced against the first, others
rushed forward from other parts to the tribunal before
the judge, confessing they were Christians, most
indifferent to the dreadful and multiform tortures that
awaited them, but declaring themselves fully and in the
most undaunted manner on the religion which
acknowledges only the one Supreme God. They
received, indeed, the final sentence of death with
gladness and exultation, so far as even to sing and send
up hymns of praise and thanksgiving, until they
breathed their last.” 16
The same cheerful hope is evident in St. Ignatius,
Bishop of Antioch, the early martyr who was torn apart
by wild beasts in Rome (around A.D. 107). In one of
his famous letters, he pleaded with his Christian
brethren in Rome not to seek his release, but to allow
him to be “poured out a libation to God, while there is
still an altar ready”: “I write to all the churches, and I
bid all men know, that of my own free will I die for
God, unless ye should hinder me. I exhort you, be ye
not an unseasonable kindness to me. Let me be given to
the wild beasts, for through them I can attain unto
God. I am God’s wheat, and I am ground by the teeth
of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread of Christ.
Rather entice the wild beasts, that they may become
my sepulchre and may leave no part of my body behind,
so that I may not, when I am fallen asleep, be burdensome
to anyone. Then shall I be truly a disciple of Jesus
Christ, when the world shall not so much as see my
body. Supplicate the Lord for me, that through these
instruments I may be found a sacrifice to God. I do not
enjoin you, as Peter and Paul did. They were Apostles,
I am a convict; they were free, but I am a slave to this
very hour. Yet if I shall suffer, then am I a freed-man of
Jesus Christ, and I shall rise free in Him. Now I am
learning to put away every desire.
“From Syria even unto Rome I fight with wild beasts, by
land and sea, by night and day, being bound amidst ten
leopards, even a company of soldiers, who only wax
worse when they are kindly treated. Howbeit through
their wrongdoings I become more completely a disciple;
yet am I not hereby justified. May I have joy of the
beasts that have been prepared for me; and I pray that
15. St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, translated and edited by Sister Penelope Lawson, C.S.M.V. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1946, 1981), pp. 42f.
16. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, viii .ix.5, trans. Christian Frederick Cruse (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, [n.d.] 1955), p. 328.
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