Friday, June 20, 2008

"Women received their dead raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection" (Hebrews 11:35).

IDEA: People who have trusted in God have suffered persecution in every period of history.

PURPOSE: To help the listeners grasp the magnitude of suffering inflicted on those who follow God.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews states, “There were those who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.”

I. Why do you think that people who are supposed to be religious resort to torture of those who disagree with them?

Often a torturer believes that if he can just get the person to say that he denies a conviction that he holds, the torturer will have won.

In the ancient world Christians simply had to say “Caesar is Lord” and drop a pinch of incense on the sacred fire. Christians who would not say and do that were tortured.

In the four Inquisitions (1184–1834) established by the Catholic church, the purpose was to secure religious and doctrinal unity through the conversion (and sometimes the persecution) of alleged heretics.

II. When the writer says that “there were those who were tortured,” what do you think that torture consisted of?

The term torture in biblical times had a specific meaning coming from the Greek word tympanizo, from which we get our English word tympany.

The person being tortured was stretched out on a rack, like the skin stretched over a drum, and then was rhythmically beaten to death with sticks in the same way that a drummer beats a drum.

III. How did believing in “a better resurrection” keep believers from giving in when being tortured?