Chapter 272—“More than Conquerors”
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ...
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that
loved us.
Romans 8:35-37
.
God’s servants receive no honor or recognition from the world. Stephen
was stoned because he preached Christ and Him crucified. Paul was
imprisoned, beaten, stoned, and finally put to death, because he was a faithful
messenger of God to the Gentiles. The apostle John was banished to the
Isle of Patmos, “for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ”
(
Revelation 1:9
.). These examples of human steadfastness in the might of
divine power are a witness to the world of the faithfulness of God’s promises,
of His abiding presence and sustaining grace.
Jesus does not present to His followers the hope of attaining earthly glory
and riches, of living a life free from trial. Instead He calls upon them to
follow Him in the path of self-denial and reproach. He who came to redeem
the world was opposed by the united forces of evil....
In all ages Satan has persecuted the people of God. He has tortured them
and put them to death, but in dying they became conquerors. They bore
witness to the power of One mightier than Satan. Wicked men may torture
and kill the body, but they cannot touch the life that is hid with Christ in God.
They can incarcerate men and women in prison walls, but they cannot bind
the spirit.
Through trial and persecution the glory—the character—of God is
revealed in His chosen ones. The believers in Christ, hated and persecuted
by the world, are educated and disciplined in the school of Christ. On earth
they walk in narrow paths; they are purified in the furnace of affliction. They
follow Christ through sore conflicts; they endure self-denial, and experience
bitter disappointments; but thus they learn the guilt and woe of sin, and they
look upon it with abhorrence. Being partakers of Christ’s sufferings, they
can look beyond the gloom to the glory, saying, “I reckon that the sufferings
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