Episode 104: Faith under Fire

In the name of the glorious Trinity, Father and Son and Holy

Spirit, forever Amen. Glory be to the.

Everlasting mercies which sent you to us, O Christ, the light

of the world, and the life of. All give us wisdom.

By your law and enlighten our. Impulses by your knowledge.

Sanctify our souls by your truth, and grant that we may be

obedient to your words and may fulfil your commandments at

every hour. O you who?

Enlightens the rational with the knowledge of Your greatness.

Do enlight, O my Lord, our thoughts, that we may meditate

upon Your holy and divine Scriptures at all times, O Lord

of all, Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

Forever. Amen.

The Acts of the Holy Apostles of our Lord, chapter 12.

Verses 1:00 to 5:00. The beheading of Saint James the

brother of John, the sons of Zebedee and the Caesar of Simon

the Rock. Let's get into it now.

At that very time, here at the king surnamed Agropa, see some

of the people of the Church to oppress them.

This was in Jerusalem and he killed James, the brother of

John, with the sword. And when he saw that this

pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Simon Peter also.

This happened during the Days of Unleavened Bread.

So he seized him, that is Peter, and put him in prison and

delivered him to the care of 16 soldiers to keep him so that he

might deliver him to the Jewish people after the past Passover.

And while Simon Peter was kept in the prison, continual earnest

prayer was offered to him to God by the church.

Let's stop there and have a discussion on these verses.

Now who is Herod? Well, Herod was the son of

Herod, Herod whom beheaded John the Baptist, Herod whom ordered

the slaughter of the 12,000 infants babies in search of

Christ, wanting to kill Jesus because he was he was threatened

that his throne would be shaken or someone else would be sitting

on his throne because he was told that a king was born.

But little did he know that the king was his king because Jesus

Christ is the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, praise be to

his name. So this Herod that we are

reading about in chapter 12 in the book of Acts is his son.

This Herod ordered the trial of Jesus Christ.

He put Jesus to to trial before the the Jewish community.

Now James as I said was the son of Zebedee.

This was not James the the the son of Joseph who was the

brother of Jesus Christ half brother.

This was not that James. This James is the son of

Zebedee. James and and John who were

called by Christ the sons of Zebedee.

Now there's a question here and I'm sure people are asking and

This is why when we read the Holy Scriptures, some people are

some way deterred or are skeptical and maybe seize from,

you know, stop from reading the scriptures.

Why does God permit this death? Why, you know, this could have

been this is early Christian era.

This could have been the 5th year, the 6th year after the

resurrection and the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ to

heaven. Why was God allowing this death

to happen? You know some people ask, before

we answer that question, let me let me pose another question

asked by non Christians who debate the divinity of Jesus

Christ. Why did not Jesus come out and

make it so easy to the whole world, to the Christendom and

say I am God, Show me in the Bible.

People say show me in the Bible. Show me in your Bible.

Where does Jesus say I am God? Well there is 2 answers to that.

Show me in my Bible where Jesus says I am not God.

Now he may allude that he is not the Father and Amen.

Jesus is not the Father, Jesus is the Son, but he is by nature

divine. He is God.

So just imagine this is this is 4 years of 50 after his

ascension and even today 2024 people are having issues having

difficulties accepting that Jesus is God.

Just imagine Christ coming down from heaven on to earth and

preaching and claiming that he is God.

You know, he said when he healed the the leper who was waiting by

the pool of Bethsaid and he was healed, the Jews said to him,

you know, they didn't care that 38 years he was just laying by

the pool and couldn't get in there because someone else was,

you know, preceding him beforehand.

And they said to him, why have you taken up your your mat and

you're walking? This is a Sabbath, you know,

totally ignoring the fact that for 38 years this leper couldn't

move and now he's moving. He's healed.

They were blinded to that. In any case, Jesus says my the

Father is working, so I am working.

And they said, oh, this is even a greater blasphemy.

And they wanted to seek them all to kill him because he made

himself to be the Father. No, he didn't.

He didn't say I am the Father, but they want to kill him.

So just imagine him coming out and saying I am God.

I'm the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel.

I am your creator. I created you.

He didn't say that because it wasn't time for that, because

you cannot pour new wine in old wine caskets.

You can't do that. However, when we read the Holy

Scriptures, open minded, we see that yes, Jesus is God according

to the Scriptures and according to what he claims, rightly so,

that he is God. All of that is the Father's is

mine. He who sees me see, has seen,

has seen the Father and more verses like that.

So it's the same. Why did God not stop this

murder? Why did God allow Saint James to

be murdered? Now I'm going to be quoting St.

John Chrysostom, my favorite, as if it just happened by chance.

Like he was persecuting the church in Jerusalem and he just,

his eyes caught James, St. James, and he grabbed him and he

beheaded him, obviously. Now if we ask why God permitted

this, and again we're going to look at the Church Father's

comments on this in John Chrysostom, we see that Saint

John writes that it was for the sake of the Jews.

Through this evil, God was persuading the Jews to come back

from their evil. Firstly, from this evil God

wanted to persuade the Jews again and us today that those

who die for Jesus Christ, those whose blood is shed for Jesus

Christ, have eternal life. It is a victory for them.

It is a victory. Christians who die for Jesus

Christ, not Christians who die because there have been, you

know, ignorant or because of their own fault, are victorious.

No, no, no, Christians who die for the sake of the Lord Jesus

Christ have eternal life. We saw this in Acts Chapter 7

Acts 7:54–60

verses 54 to 60. Saint Stephen, who was being

stoned to death, looked up and saw Jesus.

Listen to this. Everyone saw Jesus standing,

standing at His throne. Now kings are always seated at

their throne, but Christ stands up to receive those who are

martyred, who shed their blood for His sake.

So it goes to show that those who die for God will live with

God in eternity and also God's give.

God gives the Jews through this an opportunity after satisfying

their anger. Now they would, you know, the

Jews that weren't Christian, they didn't accept Jesus Christ.

They were mad at the Jews that received Jesus Christ.

You know, they saw them as their enemy.

They were angry. So through this, God was

attempting, because of free will obviously, to satisfy them so

that they would return back from their madness.

Now let's use this as an example.

You know, evil can be used and can cause people to walk away

from evil. And I'll give you some examples.

You know, one man's evil can be another man's good and holiness.

Now one man's evil, and we're talking Christian here, One

man's evil who dies, who receives evil, who accepts

punishments and sufferings and death for Jesus Christ, not

because of his own fault. Saint Peter writes this, if you

suffer because it's your fault, I'm paraphrasing, well, don't

expect a reward, but if you suffer for no reason, you suffer

for Jesus Christ, Well, you have a reward.

So those who suffer evil, not at their fault, but for the Lord

Jesus Christ according to God's knowledge and permission, and

their blood is shed, that could be someone else's holiness.

Let me give you an example. We try to persuade people not to

text while they're driving. I'm a culprit.

Now I'll I'll confess I'm a culprit.

And at times I do it. And then when I wake up to

myself, I just throw the phone on the same, say, listen, just

focus, all right? And you know what?

What, when I do that, after I've done that, I start imagining,

God forbid, and you should do this.

God forbid if one day I'm texting and God forbid, God

forbid I I run someone over, how am I going to live with myself?

First and foremost, I can't be in prison because I'll die in

prisons because I'm claustrophobic, right?

So I'm thinking of that evil, and that evil then becomes good

for me because I throw the phone on the seat so that I do not

text and drive. You know, people who love

drinking, we call them drunk cards.

By the way, the scripture says that drunk cards, not people who

drink alcohol. I drink alcohol.

Drunk cards will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.

Listen to this beloved brothers and sisters.

Drunk cards will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.

Saint Paul writes in one Corinthians.

So what what you know when you go to a a anonymous alcoholic

anonymous, what do they do? They show you videos of car

accidents where people have lost their lives and they're so

gruesome at times, like there's there's bodies hanging out of

cars. Why?

To show you that when you're drinking and you're a drunkard,

and especially when you drive, drink and drive, this could

happen. And then that evil could be good

where you give up alcohol or you do not become a drunkard.

Or when they show you photos of drunkards who are, you know, on

the streets tumbling over, falling over and, and stumbling

and not knowing what they're doing.

And then, you know, they wake up in the morning with bruised eye.

They're in the they're in the hospital.

What happened because they went up against a bouncer and, you

know, because they were drunk and what have you.

So what I'm the point is that the evil that is shown is

witness could be good for those and bring them back to good.

This is why God allowed this to to show the Jews as this is the

evil that you are grumbling about.

This is what you want. Repent, come back to good.

God also shows through this that James accepting the martyrdom

wilfully because we don't read that James was arguing his case.

It shows that he was. He consented to that with

happiness. Why?

Because the head of each person is Jesus Christ.

James had two heads, beloved. He had the physical head that we

all have, and he has the spiritual head which is Jesus

Christ. Every Christian has a head that

is called Jesus Christ. Now James was happy and was

under pressure to, I'm sorry, James was under pressure to have

his spiritual head cut off, but he refused that and said no,

decapitate me, get rid of the physical head because I have the

Lord Jesus Christ. It is true for every person,

every Christian that Christ is how our head and that's through

faith. During the ISIS attacks,

beloved, how many Christians were beheaded?

Do you remember the our brother, the Coptic brothers by the

seashore who were beheaded for Jesus Christ?

Yeah, they lost their physical head, but they they sustained

that spiritual head which was Jesus Christ.

Saint Paul writes in one Corinthians verses 11, Chapter

11, verse 3. But I want you to know that the

head of every man is the Messiah.

That is Jesus Christ, praise be to His name and being our head,

being our Lord, being our God, being our Saviour, being our

King, our forgiver, our life giver.

We need to preserve regardless of where we go in life.

I've mentioned, I believe that after a child is baptized and

has been gifted with the provisions of the Holy Spirit,

gift of the Holy Spirit, and has received the Holy Spirit, we

place a crown on the head of the child.

And the crowns are in the form of ribbons, a red and a White

Ribbon. The white, you know, symbolizing

the holiness, the cleansingness, the red symbolizing martyrdom,

red. And the, the liturgy instructs

that the red, the, the, the ribbon is to be tied on the head

with the, with the, with the remainder of the ribbons to be

hanging before the eyes of the child, which denotes that we at

all times hold before our eyes the cleanliness, the holiness

that we have received in baptism.

But at the same times, it is at all times before our eyes, in

our minds, in our hearts, reminding us that death is

inevitable and not only natural death and death caused by

disasters or accidents. But no, no, no, the death which

entails the shedding of the blood.

This is what we learned. This is early church, beloved,

early church. The death of the shedding of

blood, verses 3 and 4. And when he saw that this please

the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Simon Peter also.

This happened during the days of the Unleavened Bread and he

seized him. And you know, wasn't 1 soldier

or two soldiers sufficient for him?

He placed sixteen soldiers because there were four groups

of soldiers. Each group had 4, not 24.

Four times, 4 is 16, 16 soldiers.

He really wanted this guy to be imprisoned.

But the question is how is it that he didn't kill Peter

immediately? Well, the reason he's there is

it was at the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, which was

before Pentecost. Now the Day of Unleavened Bread,

which was also known as the Feast of the Unleavened Bread or

the Matzah, was seven days festival that took place between

Passover and the Feast of Pentecost.

And the festival commemorated the Exodus, the going out of the

people of God, the Israelis who have freed the Jews who have

freed from slavery in Egypt. But the more likely reason is

that he wanted to make a spectacle of the slaughter.

He wanted to really put that slaughter on show to bring fear

to the Jews. And the question there arises is

that why didn't the Jews being mad and angry, they were happy

at what happened to the to, to, to Saint James?

Why didn't they plead as they pleaded with his father?

The Pharisees and the Jewish priests pleaded with his father,

with Herod's father, to release Barabbas and to give him Jesus

so that they could crucify him. And they proclaimed to date, to

date, that the blood of Jesus Christ, the innocence of the of

the death of Jesus Christ or the evil that that was behind the

death of Jesus Christ, that blood, the innocence was upon

them and upon their children. Why didn't they say the same

thing? Well, maybe they had learned of

Gamaliel. Gamaliel, who was the teacher of

Saint Paul of soul when they were wanting to put the word in

the book of Acts, the apostles to death, He says, does our law

allow us to to, you know, execute someone or to put

someone to death before examining them, shouldn't we

first examine them? We don't want the the, you know,

the the sin of their blood upon us.

We don't want that. We don't.

We don't want to do what our forefathers have proclaimed upon

us. No, no.

So they may have adhered to his instructions, abstaining from

bloodshedding. They didn't even try to accuse

Simon. But they saw that what they

wanted was already happening to by the hands of Herod.

They were quite conniving, you know, very smart people.

They didn't want to get involved in it, but they were Joyce, You

know, sometimes we see evil happening in our lives.

We see evil on the street. We see evil everywhere and we

don't want to get involved. Why?

Because we don't want to have a a partaking in that evil.

Well, sometimes maybe we need to get involved to stop evil.

For example, when you see someone bashing someone on the

street being quite physical. Well, how about you try to maybe

bring peace? How about you don't pull out

your video, sorry, your telephone, your cell phone, and

start videoing a a student bashing another student at

school. My beloved students, that's

evil, and you are a partaker of that evil.

By the way, if you are taking joy in the suffering of another

person, you are partaker of that person who's causing the

suffering in a in in place of taking out your cell phone and

videographing it and laughing at it and posting it on your TikTok

or Instagram, why not try to be a a child of God or a human

being? Why not be, we say in a Syrian

anasha, a human being, and try to stop that because that is

evil. See, these people didn't try to

stop that. They were more joyous, but yet

they didn't want to have anything to do with it.

So, you know, I didn't bash. I had nothing to do with this.

I was just videographing. I was just capturing it because

one day I wanted to look at it and enjoy it and place it on, on

social media, posted on social media so that everyone could

enjoy seeing a student being bashed or being bullied.

That is evil, beloved. That is still evil.

So Simon is captured. Simon didn't try to, you know,

plead his case. He's captured humbly again,

because Jesus had already told Simon.

Simon, you know, when you were young, you would, you would wear

your own clothes and you would go to places where you wanted

to. But there's going to be a time

where you're going to be bound and they're going to be taken to

places where you did not want to go.

And here it is. He's going to prison.

And Simon would have accepted it gladly.

And God allowed that as well to show that we must gladly accept

persecutions, accusations for Christ's sake, beloved, because

we're going to read how God works in this after Simon is in

prison, verse 5. And while Simon Peter was kept

in the prison, continual pray without seizing Saint Paul

writes continual prayer was offered for him to God by the

church. Continual prayer, you know,

that's why Saint Paul writes that we must pray without

seizing, because Seoul or Saint Paul was aware of Simon being

captured and how prayer is going to be the cause, the weapon, the

armor for Sinon to be released from, not escape, but to be

released from prison. Prayer arising from a love to a

father. He was their father.

It was their apostle. You know, earnestly, beloved.

It was made earnestly out of loved, heartfelt love for this

person. You know, when we pray earnestly

when you love someone. And remember, we must all love

one another, not just our parents and our best friends and

brothers and sisters and wives and husbands and children.

No, no, no. By this they will know that you

are my disciples. Christ, rise that you love one

another. If we have genuine love for one

another, we will pray earnestly for one one another, and

continually we will pray for one another until God replies.

And it could take time according to God's perfect timing, perfect

will and perfect way and not according to how we want the

prayer to be answered. Beloved, you pray for a sick

person, you pray for a sick friend, family friend, you know,

for for a relative. You continue to pray.

You don't cease praying. But when the Lord says, I've now

heard your prayer, now your Father is going to come to me.

Praise and glory be to his name. God hasn't promised that we will

receive according to what we want, how we want.

That's why Jesus teaches, teaches us, thy will be done.

When you pray, you say thy Kingdom come, thy will, your

will be done. Earnest prayer, beloved.

It would have been a very, very hectic time.

We just, they just witnessed St. James being beheaded, basically

decapitated, and Saint Peter has been seized.

They're probably thinking that's it, it's done, it's finished.

Now all the disciples, everyone's going to be

persecuted. They didn't complain.

They didn't, you know, create a, a coup or an uproar, but they

turned to pray. They didn't start to begin to

work on how we're going to, you know, plan a release for Simon,

how we're going to go and, and and you know, you know, help him

escape and escape for no, no, they just pray.

They committed it to God and we see this with the disciples,

with the church, especially in Acts, in the book of Acts, when

they came to fulfill or to, to fill the place of Judas, they

prayed, they prayed and then they cast lots.

So this is a, a great example within the church.

This is within the church. We have issues within the

church. Why don't we pray about it as

opposed to taking sides and propaganding.

That's a word, Steven, you know, campaigning for no, no, why

don't we pray about that? Because pray is that true

alliance and it's unbeatable. It is a a a a place of refuge

for when we are truly in desperate need.

They didn't say I'm not worthy. Do you think God's going to hear

me? Of course, listen if God hears

the prayers of those who are not there, his children yet, because

they haven't received his Son and been baptized, but he hears

their prayer when they're praying to the Lord to show them

the truth. He listens to their prayers and

he sends His Son praise be to his name and they see Jesus

Christ, no one else, Jesus Christ.

And then they come to the knowledge and the understanding

of God through Jesus Christ. They receive baptism.

They proclaim him to be their Lord and Savior and they receive

baptism. How much more God the Father

will hear your prayers, the prayer of the the, the, the, the

persistent widower or the evil judge.

God says, do you not think that God, if this man, if this evil

judge, for his own benefit, made a judgement and passed his

judgement for the widower, how much more?

God will listen to those who call him day and night, his

children day and night, and he will reply according to His

will, according to his timing, according to His purpose and His

glory. They prayed because they acted

out of love, beloved, and because they acted out of love,

nothing else went through their minds as to how we can help our

Father Saint Peter, but just prayer.

Prayer, Saint John Chrysostom writes, and this was posted on

my Facebook page. Prayer is the place of refuge

for every worry, a foundation for chief fullness, a source of

constant happiness and protection against sadness.

So, Beloved, early stages of the Church.

Early errors of the Church. 50, Maybe the 6th year or the 10th

year after the Ascension. Not maybe the first decade.

Within the first decade there is persecution, there is execution,

there is capturing. Beloved, there is evil.

So how much more today? Yes, the church is being

attacked, attacked even more today, more so today.

Maybe not so much beheading in the Western countries, this you

see in the Islamic Eastern countries, but the church is

especially being attacked today in the Western countries.

Beloved, what do we do? If people say, you know, we

should demonstrate, we should come out in our numbers, does

that really help? Does it really help in numbers?

Yeah. If the entire country comes out

and demonstrates, yes, it will help because you got the 320

million votes there, right? But 10,000 people, 2000 people,

1,000,000 people demonstrating peacefully according to their

civil rights. Fine.

OK. What does that do?

How about we resort to prayer? Remember, there's always going

to be persecutions. And they're going to be even

more intensified as the days go by.

Beloved, what do we do? Come together in earnest prayer.

And remember, we can lose the physical head, but always be

prepared to preserve the spiritual head.

That is our faith in our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ.

Praise and glory be to his name now and at all times and

forever. Amen.

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sword. Until next time, God bless you

all.