The Church's Afflictions from Youth Yet Never Overcome

The Christian Church may claim the Hebrew psalmist's testimony: "Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth: yet they have not prevailed against me." Consider the Church's vulnerable beginnings. Our Lord entrusted His gospel to merely twelve apostles—destitute of human learning, worldly influence, and secular power. Yet their enemies deployed every instrument of destruction: the dungeon and the mine, the rack and the gibbet. The persecutors ploughed their backs and made long their furrows. Confiscation seized their property; imprisonment took their persons; the scaffold claimed their heads; the burning pile consumed their bodies; the amphitheatre's wild beasts devoured them amidst the roaring multitude.

Yet despite this relentless opposition, our holy religion took root and grew upward. Not all the fury of ten persecutions could exterminate it from the earth. The teeth of wild beasts could not grind it to powder; the fire could not burn it; the waters could not drown it; the dungeon could not confine it. Why? Because truth is eternal, springing from the bosom of Elohim God Himself, and therefore cannot be destroyed. Christianity is truth, not a lie—and because of this divine character, her enemies have never prevailed against her. The Church's survival across centuries testifies not to human strength but to Yahweh's vindication of His eternal Word.