here is the result of KNOWING the Jesus described below.
when you KNOW the sovereign supreme Jesus intimately well, then you can calmly reject pardons that would keep you from burning at the stake if you would only reject that knowledge.
Read this from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and think about what your reaction would be as you walked by your eleven children who are about to lose their father.
When the time came that he should be brought out of Newgate to Smithfield, the place of his execution, Mr. Woodroofe, one of the sheriffs, first came to Mr. [John] Rogers, and asked him if he would revoke his abominable doctrine, and the evil opinion of the Sacrament of the altar. Mr. Rogers answered, “That which I have preached I will seal with my blood.”
Then Mr. Woodroofe said, “Thou art an heretic.”
“That shall be known,” quoth Mr. Rogers, “at the Day of Judgment.”
“Well,” said Mr. Woodroofe, “I will never pray for thee.”
“But I will pray for you,” said Mr. Rogers; and so was brought the same day, the fourth of February, by the sheriffs, towards Smithfield, saying the Psalm Miserere by the way, all the people wonderfully rejoicing at his constancy; with great praises and thanks to God for the same.
And there in the presence of Mr. Rochester, comptroller of the queen’s household, Sir Richard Southwell, both the sheriffs, and a great number of people, he was burnt to ashes, washing his hands in the flame as he was burning. A little before his burning, his pardon was brought, if he would have recanted; but he utterly refused it. He was the first martyr of all the blessed company that suffered in Queen Mary’s time that gave the first adventure upon the fire. His wife and children, being eleven in number, ten able to go, and one sucking at her breast, met him by the way, as he went towards Smithfield. This sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood could nothing move him, but that he constantly and cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience, in the defence and quarrel of the Gospel of Christ.”
emphasis added.
would you cheerfully take your death “in the defence and quarrel of the Gospel of Christ”?
Pingback: do you know God? « Interstitial