Story from church history: Polycarp burned at the stake

An elderly man in his eighties sat at a table eating dinner. Polycarp knew his life was in danger. A group of Christians had just been executed in the arena on account of their faith. But Polycarp refused to leave Rome. The Romans were executing any self-proclaimed Christians, and pagans were betraying those they knew to be Christians. After the recent executions, the crowd in the arena had chanted for Polycarp’s death.

A renowned follower of Christ and bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp had become a Christian under the tutelage of John the apostle. Recently, the Roman proconsul had been looking for him for days. After arresting and torturing one of Polycarp’s servants, they finally learned where he was staying. The soldiers came into the house, but instead of fleeing, Polycarp calmly stated, “God’s will be done.”

Polycarp asked that food be brought for the soldiers, and he requested an hour for prayer. Amazed by Polycarp’s fearlessness, especially for a man his age, the hardened Roman soldiers granted his request. He prayed for two hours for all the Christians he knew and for the universal church, and the soldiers let him.

A proconsul (an important magistrate) ordered Polycarp to renounce Christ and give obedience to Caesar as Lord. Polycarp answered, "Eighty and six years have I served Christ, nor has He ever done me any harm. How, then, could I blaspheme my King who saved me? You threaten the fire that burns for an hour and then is quenched; but you know not of the fire of the judgment to come, and the fire of eternal punishment. Bring what you will."

Polycarp, the last one of those personally taught by the apostles, was burned at the stake on this day, February 23, 155.

Excerpted from Foxe: Voices of the Martyrs and an article by Dan Graves.

A memorable letter home

In June 1990, a fierce nationalist reaction in China against Christian missionaries and churches claimed more than 32,000 lives. The worst massacres occurred in the northern province of Shanxi. The pregnant Lizzie Atwater wrote a memorable letter home before she and six others were martyred.

Dear ones, I long for a sight of your dear faces, but I fear we shall not meet on Earth. I am preparing for the end very quietly and calmly.

The Lord is wonderfully near, and He will not fail me. I was very restless and excited while there seemed a chance of life, but God has taken away that feeling, and now I just pray for grace to meet the terrible end bravely. The pain will soon be over, and oh the sweetness of the welcome above!

My little baby will go with me. I think God will give it to me in heaven and my dear mother will be so glad to see us. I cannot imagine the Saviour's welcome. Oh, that will compensate for all these days of suspense. Dear ones, live near to God and cling less closely to Earth.

There is no other way by which we can receive that peace from God which passeth understanding. I must keep calm and still these hours. I do not regret coming to China.

On August 15, 1900, soldiers took Lizzie and ten others away from the relative safety of a nearby town and hacked them to death with their swords, tossing the bodies into a pit.

Excerpted from Foxe: Voices of the Martyrs, which was written by John Foxe and The Voices of the Martyrs and published in 2007. You can order a copy of this book from our online resource catalogue.

Story from church history: The martyrdom of William Tyndale (ca. 1494-1536)

So great is our passion to know the truth that some seekers will give everything, even their lives, for the treasure of knowing one certain thing.

William Tyndale was a well-educated scholar who was frustrated at the distance between English education and the Bible, the source of truth. Tyndale’s life would be devoted to overcoming just this obstacle.

Tyndale was born sometime around 1494 in Gloucester, England. Ninety years earlier the Church had banned the only English Bible in the world, the hand-copied work of John Wycliffe. It was a flawed translation, based on the Latin Vulgate, but it was all English speakers had. And to have it was a crime.

Tyndale’s passions eventually settled on a mission as dangerous as any in his century: to work from the Greek and Hebrew texts to create a Bible in vernacular English, so readable and accurate that an Englishman could depend on it, learn from it, and find God’s voice in it.

To do that work, Tyndale had to leave England. Tyndale travelled to Germany where he completed the New Testament in 1525. Then he went on to Antwerp, one step ahead of English agents, where the first five Old Testament books were translated and printed. In Belgium he met a community of English merchants, and though agents were searching the continent to find him, Tyndale felt secure enough to relax his guard. His lack of caution would prove fatal.

Tyndale took up a friendship with Henry Phillips, who won Tyndale’s confidence but secretly sought the bounty offered for his capture. In May 1535 the trap was set. Tyndale was taken under guard to the castle at Vilvoorde, near Brussels, where he suffered in dank and cold for eighteen months before standing trial for “maintaining that faith alone justifies... that to believe in the forgiveness of sins, and to embrace the mercy offered in the gospel, was enough for salvation.” The complete list of charges included direct attacks on church teaching.

Tyndale knew how these trials ran. He would have no chance at defence, and death was the remedy. With his body shaking from cold and the winter’s light dim for writing, he worked to complete the English Bible, helped by a sympathetic prison governor.

In August 1536, Tyndale was condemned as a heretic and defrocked. For two more months he was kept at Vilvoorde. Then in early October, just past dawn, he was led from prison to the stake. Formalities included placing the Mass once more in his hands, then quickly snatching it back, the offer of last-minute reprieve if he would only recant, and always the shouts of a crowd gathered to witness a “heathen” die.

Secured to the stake, surrounded by brush and logs, Tyndale was heard to pray, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Then the executioner snapped hard on the rope, strangling Tyndale before the blaze consumed his body.

That final prayer was for the bully King Henry VIII, whose pursuit of a king male heir had already cost Anne Boleyn her life and Catherine her marriage. So full of his own power and pomp, would this king’s eyes ever fall favourably on Tyndale’s English Bible?

Indeed they did. Two years after Tyndale’s death, King Henry authorized the distribution of the Matthew Bible, much of it Tyndale’s work. And then in 1539, all printers and sellers of books were ordered by the king to provide for the “free and liberal use of the Bible in our own maternal English tongue.” Tyndale’s dream and his last earthly appeal had come true.

Excerpted from Foxe: Voices of the Martyrs. written by John Foxe and The Voice of the Martyrs. You can order a copy of this book from our online catalogue.

Mexican martyrs: Pastor Mariano & Pastor Jairo

Mariano Diaz Méndez was a minister of the indigenous Tzotzil Evangelical Church in San Juan Chamula, a small town in the central highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. He was traveling near the village of Botatulan early on the afternoon of October 24, 2003, when a group of heavily armed men stopped his car. As a pastor in a tumultuous area, Méndez was well aware of the threat against his life and intimately familiar with the increasing attacks aimed against evangelical Christians from the caciques, or community chieftains, in the area.

Since Christianity’s advent in the Chiapas Highlands in the 1960s, the caciques have used violent tactics to discourage its spread. Scores of evangelicals have died and hundreds more have suffered injury by groups who practice a “traditionalist” religion, a semi-pagan mix of Mayan religion and Roman Catholic beliefs.

Pastor Méndez bolted from his car in an attempt to evade his attackers, but they overpowered him with their weapons, their bullets piercing his body and bringing the pastor to the ground. The assailants shot him to death.

The deadly assault against Pastor Méndez had occurred exactly one week after a pastor in the city of Mapastepec, namely Jairo Solís López, had also been killed by the caciques.

Both Pastor Méndez and Pastor López had given their hearts to serve Christ in the face of formidable challenges in Chiapas. Together, they embody what God promises in Revelation, that “they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death”; rather, they overcame “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony” (12:11).

Excerpted from Foxe: Voices of the Martyrs. You can order a copy of this book from our online resource catalogue.

Ever wonder about the origin of Valentine’s Day?

“And walk in love, as Christ also has
loved us and given Himself for us,
an offering and a sacrifice to God
for a sweet-smelling aroma.”
Ephesians 5:1-2

This story of Valentinus (ca. 269 AD) is excerpted from Foxe: Voices of the Martyrs, which was written by John Foxe and The Voices of the Martyrs and published in 2007.

The story goes like this:

Three 3rd-century martyrs all carry the name Valentinus. One was a priest in Rome, one a bishop of Interamna and one a Christian in the Roman province of Africa. About the lives of these three, we know nothing. About the death of Valentinus at the decree of Claudius II, we think the story hinges on soldiering, marriages and a cold-hearted emperor—all the ingredients of passion and power that prompted Pope Gelasius in 496 to declare St. Valentine’s Day as a replacement for the Roman pagan holiday of Lupercalia.

Apparently, recruits for Claudius’s army were complaining about their long separations from wives and lovers, for the edict went forth that no soldier of Rome—may their hearts grow bloodlessly cold—could weaken his will or soften his courage in marriage. Of course, edicts do not command passions, so marriages simply went underground with an assist from the sympathetic priest Valentinus, to whom soldiers and their betrothed surreptitiously fled.

In time, the priest was caught and his treasonous disobedience duly sentenced by the Prefect of Rome. He was beaten by clubs and beheaded on February 14, in either 269 or 270 AD.

It’s an unlikely subplot, but nonetheless another story is told that during his imprisonment, Valentinus tutored his jailor’s daughter, Julia, who was blind from birth. On the eve of his martyrdom, Valentinus sent her a note of encouragement and faith, including on it a yellow crocus. When Julia opened the note, the story goes, her blind eyes fixed on the flower and she was healed. In gratitude, Julia planted an almond tree near Valentinus’s grave. Today, the almond tree remains a symbol of abiding love and friendship.

This Valentine’s Day, consider Valentinus and others whose faith caused them to give the ultimate sacrifice: their lives.