It has been tried across the centuries — in public arenas, through mob violence and by official banning.
In the first 300 years of the New Testament church, ten massive persecutions took place, and the Roman emperor Diocletian even had a medal struck — inscribed with the boast, ‘The Christian religion is destroyed, and the worship of the gods is restored’.
But — as Bishop William Greer of Manchester once told his critic during a TV interview — ‘The church will stand at the grave of the BBC, the ITV and all other institutions knocking around the world today’. Those might sound like brave words only, were it not for the assurance of Jesus Christ that the gates of hell itself will not prevail against the church.
