Revelation 20:4 “I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God.”

Through the ages, the world God wants to save has wanted to kill the very people the Lord sends to their rescue. Many of the Old Testament prophets met an untimely death at the hands of the people to whom they were sent. Isaiah was sawed in two on the orders of the king. Several attempts were made to murder Jeremiah. Jewish tradition says he was eventually stoned to death. Zechariah was killed inside of God’s own temple.

Of Jesus’ apostles, John, the writer here, was the only one who died a natural death. Many missionaries since have died at the hands of the people they were trying to reach. When the established Christian churches across Europe became corrupt, many faithful men who tried to reform them and lead them back to the Scriptures were burned at the stake for their efforts.

At the time the Apostle John saw this vision in Revelation, beheading was the favorite method for getting rid of Christian leaders. Feeding them to the lions would come later. John was writing to comfort people who had seen their spiritual leaders put to death this way. The people in his vision are not necessarily, however, limited to those who died under this kind of persecution. It is not out of keeping with John’s vision to see others added to this group by various methods across the span of history.

The reason for killing prophets, preachers, and missionaries was not just to silence their voices. It was also intended to intimidate the Bible-believing Christians who followed them. It could even drive some away from the Christian faith. Christians in our country have been spared this kind of treatment for most of our nation’s history. It has been an island of safety, an odd blip on the historical timeline. This is due in part to the influence of so many persecuted Christians who fled here from the very beginning.

But persecution has not been absent altogether. It grows as American Christianity shrinks. Tolerance for Christian teaching on sex and marriage, the sanctity of life, Jesus as the only way to heaven, etc., has been eroding. People of influence in industry, entertainment, sports, politics, and even religion vilify ideas that can easily be demonstrated to be the teachings of Jesus and his apostles. They regard them not merely as ignorant or misguided. They denounce them as hurtful and evil. The point of the campaign is to shame such beliefs and those who hold them.

The Lord’s reason for showing John these persecuted martyrs of the faith was not to kindle a spirit of revenge or rally believers to violent resistance. We need to guard against those kinds of reactions. That’s not Christ’s way.

But he understood the temptation to despair under persecution, abandon the faith to escape it, and hide our faith to avoid it. These are the inclinations we need to resist. For believers, death always leads to reward, even if that death was violent and unjust. “Thrones” are in view in John’s vision. These martyred believers didn’t die in defeat. They were granted a promotion. We still have every reason to believe, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:6).