We have seven team Bible studies going on this semester at Georgia with the women athletes/auxiliary teams. When I get the chance to interact with of these young women throughout the week, there always seems to be one or two of them that say they’d love to study the book of Revelation. I had the opportunity to take a course on Revelation with Carolyn Rogers and a group of women at Briarwood Baptist a couple of years ago. It was fantastic. I’d never studied the book before. I had never read any of the Left Behind series (LaHaye) or many of the available books written by TV evangelists. Quite frankly, I was intimidated by it because much of what I had read and heard previously just confused me.

Studying Revelation (through Precept Int’l), however, really seemed to complete the Bible’s overall message. There were so many cross-references (using one verse to explain another) between the Old Testament and the New. By the time we finished this two year course, I felt like I’d been everywhere in the Scriptures.
This brings me to the main question of the discussion of this blog and it’s this: What exactly can we expect from what many pastors, missionaries and religious leaders call “the end times” ? One area I’d like to reflect on is martyrdom. By definition, it means, “to be put to death for adhering to a belief.”

It’d probably be safe to assume that most of us who call ourselves Christians are probably far removed from the threat of martyrdom. Yes, we do get criticized and sometimes alienated for radical faith, but in America we pretty much don’t have to worry about dying for our faith, at least not yet anyway.

Here’s a story pastor and teacher, John Piper (Bethlehem Baptist in Minneapolis, Minnesota), shared in his book, Taste & See. It’s about the Haim family who were Christian missionaries in Cambodia in 1975.
In the village of Siem Riep, Cambodia, Haim, a Christian teacher “knew that the youthful black-clad Khmer Rouge soldiers now heading across the field were coming this time for him”…Haim was determined that when his turn came, he would die with dignity and without complaint. Since “Liberation” on April 17, 1975, what Cambodian had not considered this day?...Haim’s entire family was rounded up that afternoon. They were “the old dandruff!”, “bad blood!”, “enemies of the glorious revolution!”, “CIA agents!” They were Christians.
The family spent a sleepless night comforting one another and praying for each other as they lay together in the dewy grass beneath a stand of friendly trees. Next morning the teenage soldiers returned and led them from their Gethsemane to their place of execution, to a nearby viel somlap, “the killing fields”….
The family were ordered to dig a large grave for themselves. Then, consenting to Haim’s request for a moment to prepare themselves for death, father, mother, and children, hands linked, knelt together around the gaping pit. With loud cries to God, Haim began exhorting both the Khmer Rouge and all those looking on from afar to repent and believe the gospel.
Then in panic, one of Haim’s youngest sons leapt to his feet, bolted into the surrounding bush and disappeared. Haim jumped up and with amazing coolness and authority prevailed upon the Khmer Rouge not to pursue the lad, but allow him to call the boy back. The knots of onlookers, peering around the trees, the Khmer Rouge, and the stunned family still kneeling at the graveside, looked on in awe as Haim began calling his son, pleading with him to return and die together with his family. “What comparison, my son,” he called out, “stealing a few more days of life in the wilderness, a fugitive, wretched and alone, to joining your family here momentarily around this grave but soon around the throne of God, free forever in Paradise?” After a few tense minutes the bushes parted, and the lad, weeping, walked slowly back to his place with the kneeling family. “Now we are ready to go,” Haim told the Khmer Rouge.
Few of those watching doubted that as each of these Christians’ bodies toppled silently into the earthen pit which the victims themselves had prepared, their souls soared heavenward to a place prepared by their Lord. (This excerpt is taken from Killing Fields, Living Fields: An Unfinished Portrait of the Cambodian Church—the Church That Would Not Die by Don Cormack)John Piper ends the excerpt with this thought: “Haim and his family will not have died in vain if you and I are moved to set our minds on things that are above, to love Christ more than this world, and to be so radically freed for love and witness and courage in the cause of truth that nothing can intimidate us.” (pg. 51, Taste & See)

Today, if you have a chance to read your Bible, go to Luke 21:12-13, 16, 18-19, and reflect on it.