Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks.

Where we connect the Bible to your life,

in the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Patrick Miller.

Words like persecution are like wet concrete. We tend to pour them into all sorts of places and context and left alone they harden, they become the new meaning.

But what does persecution mean because a lot of people disagree?

One person's quote unquote persecution is just another person's bad day.

So what is persecution and how do we think about it in the New Testament?

Is persecution limited to circumstances in which there's government sanctioned persecution

where there's violence or murder done by the hands of the government,

where there's imprisonment or garnishment of wages,

where the government prohibits Christianity,

there are more countries like this than you might realize.

The Voice of the Martyrs is an organization that indexes the persecution of Christians

along these lines.

And believe it or not, there are 41 countries that fall into this exact category where there's governmental persecution.

But maybe persecution's bigger than that.

Could we go one step forward and simply adding countries where Christians

face hostilities from the population not the government itself in other words the

government may not be persecuting Christians but the population is showing extreme prejudice and

even legalized violence towards followers of Jesus. There's an additional 22

countries on that list in light of the fact that there are Christians around the world

...