Beatitudes
31
to the front and become the subject of examination and discussion,
even through the contempt placed upon it. The minds of the people
must be agitated; every controversy, every reproach, every effort to
restrict liberty of conscience, is God’s means of awakening minds that
otherwise might slumber.
How often this result has been seen in the history of God’s mes-
sengers! When the noble and eloquent Stephen was stoned to death
at the instigation of the Sanhedrin council, there was no loss to the
cause of the gospel. The light of heaven that glorified his face, the
divine compassion breathed in his dying prayer, were as a sharp ar-
row of conviction to the bigoted Sanhedrist who stood by, and Saul,
[34]
the persecuting Pharisee, became a chosen vessel to bear the name
of Christ before Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. And
long afterward Paul the aged wrote from his prison house at Rome:
“Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife: ... not sincerely,
supposing to add affliction to my bonds.... Notwithstanding, every
way, whether in pretense, or in truth, Christ is preached.”
Philippians
1:15-18
. Through Paul’s imprisonment the gospel was spread abroad,
and souls were won for Christ in the very palace of the Caesars. By the
efforts of Satan to destroy it, the “incorruptible” seed of the word of
God, “which liveth and abideth forever” (
1 Peter 1:23
), is sown in the
hearts of men; through the reproach and persecution of His children
the name of Christ is magnified and souls are saved.
Great is the reward in heaven of those who are witnesses for Christ
through persecution and reproach. While the people are looking for
earthly good, Jesus points them to a heavenly reward. But He does not
place it all in the future life; it begins here. The Lord appeared of old
time to Abraham and said, “I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great
reward.”
Genesis 15:1
. This is the reward of all who follow Christ.
Jehovah Immanuel—He “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge,” in whom dwells “all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily” (
Colossians 2:3, 9
)—to be brought into sympathy with Him,
to know Him, to possess Him, as the heart opens more and more to
receive His attributes; to know His love and power, to possess the
unsearchable riches of Christ, to comprehend more and more “what is
[35]
the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love
of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all
the fullness of God” (
Ephesians 3:18, 19
)—“this is the heritage of the