We are a generation crying wolf.

Jesus said to beware “ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15). Paul warned of “fierce wolves” (Acts 20:29). And for two millennia, one of our enemy’s best schemes has been to quietly infiltrate the flock with predators. There have always been wolves.

Yet our awareness of wolves, and access to their stories, is particularly acute in our times, and with it has come hair-trigger suspicion of even worthy leaders. In an effort to expose wolves in sheep’s clothing, some today imagine real shepherds to be wearing wolves’ underwear. The contagion is tragic. In the end, those who will be hurt most are the genuine victims, whose real cries for help will become harder to hear in the din of over-eager accusations.

In confused days like ours, as in every generation, we’re called afresh to take our cues from Scripture, rather than what’s trending in an unbelieving society. We need God’s word on how to watch for wolves, and we also need a positive vision of what to look for in our leaders. As the list grows longer of what to beware, do we have any corresponding clarity on what to pursue?

Three Big Categories

Into one of the great questions of our time, the risen Christ provides some bracing and clear answers. First comes his own words, while among us, in Mark 10:42–45: his leaders don’t “lord it over,” but serve. Then, we have Paul’s remarkable words to the Ephesian elders captured in Acts 20. Add Peter’s charge to “fellow elders” in 1 Peter 5. Hebrews also sounds a clarion call in its final chapter (Hebrews 13:7–8, 13). And most extensive of all, we have the letters of Paul. Especially the Pastoral Epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. There, among other passages, we find the “elder qualifications” of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, where the apostle lays out a bounty of fifteen traits in each list, with the two lists largely overlapping.

We have not been left without direction.

However, sometimes we do get lost in plentiful data. In fact, we have so much guidance available for us on what makes for true, enduring, trustworthy leaders that it might help to have some simple, memorable categories to bring organizing clarity to the many details.

Consider one such effort to slice the pie into three pieces, based on the graces catalogued in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. The three each start with an H (or H sound). And I’ll show the work on which specific traits go under each heading.

1. Humbled

First and foremost comes the man before his God, that is, “in secret” (Matthew 6:4, 6, 18). The man is his truest self alone before God, with no human eyes watching. This is the man that family, church, and world may not see directly, but they will most definitely see him indirectly by his fruit. Over time, this man, the real man, comes out. And perhaps the chief manifestation will be a genuine, compelling humility that cannot be faked. “He must not be arrogant” (Titus 1:7).

A pastor might pretend to have first steeped his soul in hearing God’s voice in Bible meditation and having God’s ear in prayer, but he can’t pretend it for weeks on end. His spiritual thinness will manifest. The sheep will know in time.

To be clear, the humility we’re looking for here is not a virtue that a man “grows from scratch,” as if he had been born without pride and just needed to develop the opposite. Rather, he was born a sinner, with deep native conceit — and apart from the grace of God, this original pride will deepen and calcify. And God does not typically purge a man of the main roots of his pride through quiet, painless processes alone. He usually roughs him up in painful moments. He humbles him. It can be ugly. And in time, a different kind of man, by grace, emerges on the other side.

Tim Keller tells of Martyn Lloyd-Jones sitting in a gathering of older pastors who were discussing some younger preacher with extraordinary gifts:

This man was being acclaimed, and there was real hope that God could use him to renew and revive his church. The ministers were hopeful. But then one of them said to the others: “Well, all well and good, but you know, I don’t think he’s been humbled yet.” And the other ministers looked very grave.

Lloyd-Jones, says Keller, was hit hard that “unless something comes into your life that breaks you of your self-righteousness and pride, you may say you believe the gospel of grace but . . . the penny hasn’t dropped” (The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, 119).

Humbled to Lead and Feed

We need humbled pastors. And for most, if not all, God designs the calling process to the pastorate to be part of this humbling. Aspiring to the office is critical, as 1 Timothy 3:1 notes — because in this line of work it is vital to labor “not under compulsion” or “for shameful gain” but willingly and eagerly (1 Peter 5:2). Yet aspiration alone does not make a pastor. He also needs the affirmation over time of fellows in his local church, and then, and often most humbling, the specific real-life appointment of some local church to the office. He may aspire to pastor, but he is not yet called to pastor until some real church appoints him.

“We pray for humbled, whole, and honorable pastors who together will face the challenges that come at each local church.”

So too, under this banner of the humbled man before his Lord, comes the requirement that pastor-elders be (1) “able to teach” and (2) “sober-minded.” Christ calls his undershepherds to lead and feed the flock — that is, to govern and to teach. Which relates to the particular call of church leaders to the word of God and prayer (Acts 6:4). Faithful pastors teach God’s word, not their own preferences, and they lead prayerfully, with God-given sober-mindedness, not natural human wisdom.

Such humbled men “keep their heads” (sober-minded) in conflicted and trying times. They’re calm, settled, secure, and wise — and wise enough not to go off on their own but contribute to and receive wisdom in the context of team leadership, that is, a plurality of local pastors. And such humbled men, when matched with teaching ability (able to teach), are a powerful combination in the leading and feeding of the flock, where genuine skill and ability in teaching is required and where we do not “teach ourselves” as our subject but the stewardship of Scripture we have from Christ.

2. Whole

Second, then, growing out from a man’s devotional life, and life of humility before his God, is the man before those who know him best. We might say “in private.” Does he have integrity? Is he whole, the same in public and private?

One aspect of his wholeness is the broad (and beautiful) banner of self-control (prominent in 1 Timothy 3 and mentioned twice in Titus 1). Has he gained a relative, settled, and holy mastery of his own appetites and bodily passions? Does he seem, by the Spirit, to control his own gut, or is he controlled by it? Related are the two disqualifiers “not a drunkard” and “not a lover of money.”

Intimately connected with “self-control” biblically is sexual holiness and being (literally) a “one-woman man,” which is not simply a box to check (“husband of one wife”) that he’s married and not divorced. Rather, “one-woman man” presses deeper to the fidelity of the man’s soul. Is he faithful to his wife in body, mind, heart, and words? Does he care for her as Christ does for his church? As one of the pastors, he will be part of the team of leaders caring for a particular local church.

Such wholeness, then, also relates to his own household management: “He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (1 Timothy 3:4–5). Distraction and abdication at home make him unfit for the leadership the church needs.

3. Honorable

Finally, we have the inevitable public dimension: the man before the watching church and world. At first blush, we might find it strange that spiritual leadership relates so much to public perception and reputation, but we should keep in mind the public nature of church office. It is vital that our pastors be honorable.

The express trait that gets at this most clearly is “respectable,” that is, the man’s life and words make it easier (rather than harder) to respect him, both within the church and in the broader community. So, leading the lists in both 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 is “above reproach.” This likely begins with Christian eyes, though it’s complemented with “outsiders” in 1 Timothy 3:7: “Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.”

One aspect of this honorable public life is hospitality, which is literally “love of strangers.” Rather than defaulting to fear or dislike of unknown persons, he extends welcome in Christ, whether to the church or into his own home or into conversation.

One final piece of honorable public bearing is how the man carries himself in conflict and when upset. Paul says “not violent but gentle.” Gentleness is not the absence of strength, but the addition of virtue to strength. It applies strength in life-giving, rather than life-harming, ways. One last disqualifier is “not quarrelsome.” Mature Christian leaders aren’t afraid to engage when they must, but they don’t go around picking fights for sport (2 Timothy 2:24–26).

Resilient in Conflict

The nature of the Christian faith is such that good leaders are perennially important. Yet, as many of us have learned in tough times, good leaders prove even more precious in conflict. That’s the setting in both Ephesus and Crete, as Paul writes to Timothy and Titus, and it’s foregrounded in 2 Timothy 2:24–26 and in 1 Peter 5:1–5.

“Good pastors, as a local team of sober-minded teachers, shine all the brighter in tough times.”

Good pastors, as a local team of sober-minded teachers, shine all the brighter in tough times, in the times of difficulty and suffering that already were in the first century, that many face today, and that are coming in the days ahead. And so, we pray for humbled, whole, and honorable pastors who together will meet the challenges that come to each local church.

Even as our generation cries wolf, we pray and look expectantly, knowing that such worthy leaders do not emerge by accident, nor are they as rare as some may suspect. Rather, they are divine gifts, sovereignly appointed and provided, supplied by the risen Christ, for the joy and health of his church.

The memories, on most days, seem better left forgotten. Never has remembering sweet Bible studies tasted so bitter. Flashbacks of late-night conversations and time spent in prayer press inconsiderately upon the wound. In that large group, I can still hear his profession of faith echo. I thought I heard angels sing at his surrender. So long we had prayed for his salvation. Now, he no longer walks with Jesus.

The grief of false conversions.

“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” (1 John 2:19). They. We knew them by another name: friend, spouse, mother, son. Each sang with us in church, confessed to be the Savior’s, renounced the world and Satan at baptism — but only for a time.

Our prayers, we thought, were finally answered. Their souls, we thought, were finally saved. Our joy, we thought, was finally complete. The prodigal son returned home — and left again. The difference between a comedy and a tragedy, some say, is where you place the period. Their faith, at best, led only to a semicolon; what a horrible independent clause came next: “They went out from us.”

How the Gospel Dies in a Soul

Jesus tells the tragedies of our daughters, our best friends, our parents, in his parable of the sower.

The parable is familiar. The sower scatters seed on four soils. Some falls on the path — where the hateful bird, Satan, steals it before it can be understood. Such are those who dismiss the gospel as foolishness and never pretend to believe. The fourth soil is the good soil, the true soil, the one who receives the Christ by faith and holds to him, the genuine Christian. But the second and third soils receive the seed, it germinates, and life sprouts from dead earth. Hallelujah! Professions are made; baptismal waters stir; they break bread with us. Our prayers, we believe, have been answered. But the gospel seed, over time, dies. Their faith returns to the dirt before our eyes.

Jesus depicts two ways the gospel dies in the soul.

Scorched by Trials

The first false soil is rocky.

Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. (Matthew 13:5–6)

The most confusing part about this soil is how wonderful the beginning seems. Upon hearing the gospel word, they do not argue with it or poke at it. Rather, these receive it “with joy” (Matthew 13:20). They smile at the news of Jesus, shed tears that he would die in their place. They raise their hands and sing of eternal life with what Jesus tells us is real joy.

But the plant shoots up quickly because the soil beneath is thin. Inhospitable rock prevents the roots from growing deep. When the sun eventually rises, tribulation or persecution beat down upon them on account of their new faith in Christ (verse 21). Through much of church history (and still in many places today), this entailed lives threatened, property plundered, friends arrested. In the modern Western context, girlfriends threaten to break up with them. They lose their job. They become the ridicule of family and friends.

A time of testing arrives, and they fall away. They received the word with joy, but when the weather changed, they headed back home, as did Bunyan’s Pliable. Happily, Pliable walked from the City of Destruction as Christian assured him of all the glories that awaited them at the Celestial City. But they soon fell into the Slough of Despond.

At that Pliable began to be offended, and angrily said to his fellow, “Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect betwixt this and our journey’s end?”

He struggled out of the pit and returned home.

So with some loved ones. They explode like a firework only to fizzle in the night sky. Their initial joy, though real, proved shallow. The gospel gripped passing emotions but did not reach the heart. Their god was worth serving, but only in fair weather. Their faith was worth confessing, but only while it cost them little. Their Shepherd was good to follow, but only when he led to green pastures. The sun rises and scorches the gospel word buried in the shallows of their soul.

Choked by Pleasures

Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. (Matthew 13:7)

Here, we find that more than just the gospel grew in the heart. Alongside faith grew rival loves — thorns.

As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. (Matthew 13:22)

They grew too busy. They began a new relationship. They found a way to make some extra money. Jesus and his service could wait a little longer after all. The love of this world and its shiny things, its comforts, its urgent business became preferred to the unseen world. These sharp loves wrapped themselves around the word of the cross, of forgiveness of sins, and of eternal life with God, and squeezed. Maybe we saw them put up some fight as faith lost its breath, but busyness, this career, that boyfriend proved too gripping.

We see these thorns grow even in the hearts of those who seemed most dedicated to Christ and his work in this world. Such was the tragedy of Demas. Paul writes to the Colossian church, “Luke the beloved physician greets you, as does Demas” (Colossians 4:14). Paul calls him his “fellow worker” in his letter to Philemon (verse 24). Yet thorny soil he proved to be in the end. “For Demas,” Paul writes to Timothy at the end of his life, “in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica” (2 Timothy 4:10).

In love with this present world, they desert us, desert Christ — thorny soil.

Heart of the Matter

The soils represent different types of hearts. In some rocky hearts, the gospel seed dies due to a shallowness of reception. In thorny hearts, it dies in the grip of love for this world and its concerns. Yet read the description of the good soil in Luke’s account:

As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience. (Luke 8:15)

“Good soil fends off encroaching loves for a pure and beautiful devotion to Jesus.”

Good soil holds fast the gospel seed, refusing to relinquish it when persecution comes. Good soil fends off encroaching loves for a pure and beautiful devotion to Jesus. Good soil bears fruit with patience. Good soil is analogous to a good and beautiful heart, a heart promised long ago:

I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:26–27)

The new-covenant heart, one removed of its stone and cleansed of its competing loves — this heart endures trials and tribulation, and resists temptation and the world’s best, aided and empowered by God’s own indwelling Spirit. Good soil bears good fruit, yielding thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold (Matthew 13:23).

A Prayer

Father, tears well in our eyes as we consider those whose desertion our hearts cannot bear. What hope is left?

For some, you alone know it is too late to restore them to repentance. For them it is impossible to be restored, for they have been enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, shared in the Holy Spirit, and tasted the goodness of your word (Hebrews 6:4–6). We love your Son, and would not have him “crucified again” or held up for contempt. And yet, you can permit restoration (Hebrews 6:3). Let us be hopeful of better things — namely, that you are not done with our loved ones just yet.

“Let us be hopeful of better things — namely, that you are not done with our loved ones just yet.”

Let us see those who have wandered from the truth be brought back. Use us to return them from their wandering. Use us to save their souls from death and cover a multitude of sins (James 5:19–20). Teach our lips the promise, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:7). Your grace is unlike our grace. You offer abundant pardon still, and in that, we hope.

And grant us each to keep eyes and prayers on one another, lest we too fall. Let us take heed, lest there be in any of us an evil, unbelieving heart, leading us to fall away from the living God. May we be diligent to exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of us may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:12–13). Keep us in your love. Be pleased to place the period — over them and us — after the words, “Enter into the joy of your Master.”

ABSTRACT: Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in the early fourth century brought an end to state-sponsored persecution in the Roman empire. Around the same time, however, the relatively peaceful Persian empire turned violently upon the church in its lands. Though the accurate number of martyrs remains difficult to assess, the most conservative estimates place the death toll in the Great Persian Persecution (339–379) far higher — even ten times higher — than the death toll in the worst Roman persecution. In response to such widespread assaults, many Persian Christians fled if they could. Many others, either unable or unwilling to flee, took courage from stories of faithful sufferers and stood firm. Today, their testimonies still give fresh courage to those who suffer for Christ.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Donald Fairbairn, Professor of Early Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, to offer a brief history of the great Persian persecution.

When Western Protestants think of the persecution of early Christians, we often imagine believers being thrown to the lions in the Roman Colosseum. According to the story as we learned it in Sunday school and elsewhere, Christians were ruthlessly persecuted for their faith for three centuries, until Constantine’s dramatic conversion around the year 312 brought about a sea change in the Roman empire’s attitude toward Christianity.

This Sunday school version of the story, while not wrong, is both misleading and incomplete. It is misleading because it gives the impression that persecution in the Roman empire was continuous, when in fact it was sporadic, varying from nonexistent to severe, depending on where and when one lived. This story is also incomplete because it does not even acknowledge by far the worst persecution of Christians in the ancient world, the Great Persian Persecution instigated by Shah Shapur II in 339.1 Many Western Christians are not aware that Christianity quickly took root in Persia (approximately modern-day Iran and Iraq) in ancient times.2 A look at the differing fortunes of Christians in the Roman and Persian empires, as well as the ways they responded to persecution, yields important lessons for believers today.

Two Great Persecutions Compared

Persecution of Christians in the Roman empire was generally local in character, confined to a region based on the personal antipathy of the governor toward the faith. But there were two major periods of widespread persecution, encompassing most regions of the empire at the same time. These were a persecution under emperors Decius and Valerian in the 250s, and the Great Persecution under Emperor Diocletian, which began in 303 and lasted a couple of years in the western part of the empire and a couple of decades in the eastern part. It was during this Great Persecution that Constantine became a Christian and gained control over the entire Roman empire.

By carefully counting the martyr lists in given regions at given times, modern scholars can gain a general picture of the severity of the persecution and then extrapolate to arrive at guesses of how many believers were killed in total. An estimate that has gained scholarly acceptance is perhaps 3,000–3,500 deaths in all, of which maybe 500 happened in the west and 2,500–3,000 in the eastern parts of the empire.3 When we consider that in the early fourth century, the population of the Roman empire was between 60 and 75 million people, of whom perhaps 10 percent (or about 6–7 million) were Christians, we can see that the total death toll was relatively small.

In contrast, the Great Persian Persecution is traditionally regarded as having lasted forty years, from 339 until Shapur’s death in 379. In actuality, it was frightfully intense for a couple of decades and then ebbed and flowed until the early fifth century, well beyond the life span of Shapur himself. Estimating deaths from this persecution is much harder than in the case of Diocletian’s, but one of the earliest reports we have is sobering.

The church historian Sozomen, writing about 440, declares, “I shall simply state that the number of men and women whose names have been ascertained, and who were martyred at this period, have been computed to be sixteen thousand; while the multitude outside of these is beyond enumeration.”4 This statement, even if exaggerated, points to a huge death toll. Modern estimates have varied from as many as the eye-popping figure of 190,0005 down to a more “modest” figure of 35,000.6 Even the conservative estimate is ten times the number of Christians martyred in the Great Roman Persecution, although the Persian empire’s population (perhaps 18–35 million) was less than half that of the Roman, with a much smaller Christian population as well. By any estimate, the loss of life in the Great Persian Persecution was immeasurably greater than the death toll of the Great Roman Persecution a few decades earlier.

“The loss of life in the Great Persian Persecution was immeasurably greater than the death toll of the Great Roman Persecution.”

This staggering death toll is all the more surprising when we consider that prior to the fourth century, there had been no significant persecution of Christians in the Persian empire at all. Indeed, early in the fourth century, just as the Roman empire shifted from persecuting Christians (in varying degrees in different places and times) to favoring our faith, the Persian empire changed from basically ignoring Christians to unleashing a savage persecution on them. How did such a shocking change come about? To answer this question, we will need a brief overview of early Christianity in the Persian empire.

Treatment of Christians in the Persian Empire

The early Christian period took place during the long reigns of two great Persian dynasties: the Parthians, who ruled from 247 BC until AD 224, and the Sassanids, who reigned from 224 until they were conquered by the Arabs in 651. The Parthian period was one of relative peace in Persia, and there was essentially no state action against Christians, for several possible reasons.

First, the Parthian regime was benign and decentralized, with a great deal of provincial autonomy. There was little persecution of anyone for any reason. Second, the Romans were the major menace to Persia, and it was common for Persian rulers to take the opposite position on any matter that was important to Rome. Since the Romans were suspicious of their Christian population, the Persians tended to welcome them or at least to leave them alone. Third was the fact that Zoroastrianism, the dominant religion in Persia, was much closer to the Christian faith than Roman polytheism. Zoroastrianism was a dualistic religion focused on the conflict between good and evil, and there were superficial resemblances with Christianity, such as a belief in a coming messiah and judgment after death. As a result, Christians did not stand out in Persian society nearly to the degree they did in pagan Roman society.

The political situation of Persia changed dramatically in the early third century. Significant invasions from Roman forces fueled a popular rebellion against the peaceful Parthian dynasty. A much more authoritarian regime, the Sassanids, gained popular favor on a platform of keeping Persia safe from the Romans, and in 224, they took control. The Sassanids were strict Zoroastrians and made that religion the national faith of Persia.

This time period also saw the rise of Manichaeism, another form of dualism that was directly in competition with Zoroastrianism. Its prophet, Mani, combined many features of Zoroastrianism with some specifically Christian language (he even called himself a disciple of Jesus Christ), and Manichaeism spread like wildfire in Persia and beyond. It was clearly a threat to the national religion, and in the 270s Mani was executed by crucifixion. To the Sassanid rulers, Christianity and Manichaeism looked the same,7 and there was some minor persecution of Christians from 276 to 293 because they were incorrectly thought to be Manichaeans. This was the first time Christians were targeted for ill-treatment in the Persian empire, and while the suffering was mild, it is noteworthy that it came about mainly because of mistaken identity.8

Shapur’s Persecution of Christians

The dawn of the fourth century saw Persia facing increased threats not only from the Romans (who captured most of northern Mesopotamia), but also from the Arabs and other wandering groups who attacked at the same time. When Shah Shapur II was born in 309, the empire seemed on the verge of collapse, but while still a teenager he steeled the Persian people to retake their homeland from invaders again.

Sometime before 325, the now-Christian Roman emperor Constantine wrote Shapur a letter, in which he encouraged the young shah to embrace Christianity.9 Constantine pointed out the presence of many Christians in Persia and urged Shapur to treat them well: “Now, because your power is great, I commend these persons to your protection; because your piety is eminent, I commit them to your care. Cherish them with your wonted humanity and kindness; for by this proof of faith you will secure an immeasurable benefit both to yourself and us.”10 In the process of making these suggestions, Constantine inadvertently called the attention of Shapur’s advisers both to the presence of Christians in their midst and to the fact that Rome now favored followers of the new religion.

In the 330s, with the Roman world solidly in his control and largely Christian, Constantine prepared for another Roman attack on Persia, but he fell ill and died in 337. Shapur immediately counterattacked in an attempt to retake the city of Nisibis (in extreme southeastern Turkey today), which the Romans had taken from Persia some four decades earlier. Shapur’s attack failed, and he blamed the defeat on the Christians in Nisibis, who he claimed had aided the Roman army. Back in the Persian capital, Seleucia-Ctesiphon (on the lower Tigris River near current-day Baghdad), rumors swirled that the Christian bishop of the city, Simon, was providing military intelligence to the Romans. Zoroastrian religious officials spread the rumors to stoke fires of animosity toward Christians, and in 339, Shapur began his massive crackdown on Christians.

The shah began by doubling the taxes on Christians and ordering Bishop Simon to collect. When Simon predictably refused,11 Shapur ordered the destruction of churches and the execution of bishops who refused to take part in the national worship of the sun. The shah personally offered Simon gifts if he would take part in the prescribed worship, but threatened to kill all Christians if he refused. Simon remained obstinate and was thrown into prison to reconsider. Finally, Shapur forced Simon to watch the execution of more than a hundred other Christian clergy before he too was beheaded.12 For at least the next twenty years, the Persians killed Christians throughout their empire. Most of the time, they identified church leaders and singled them out for execution. At other times, the Persians targeted Christians who had converted from Zoroastrianism — that is, native Persian converts, as opposed to Jews or Syrian foreigners who had become Christian. Occasionally they resorted simply to the indiscriminate massacre of Christian populations.

In the 360s, Shapur again had to face a Roman invasion, this one from Constantine’s nephew Julian the Apostate, who had thrown off his Christian upbringing and who had visions not only of restoring the glory of pagan Rome but also of becoming himself a new Alexander the Great. Julian advanced almost to Seleucia-Ctesiphon before being driven back and ultimately killed in battle in 363. Shapur showed no mercy to the defeated Romans; he demanded and received back all the Persian territory that had been taken before his birth. At this point, the shah may have slackened the persecution of Christians within his realm, but even after his death, the new Zoroastrian suspicion that Christians were Roman spies did not completely die down, and persecution continued sporadically.

Finally, in 409 Shah Yazdegerd I issued a decree of toleration. A council held in the capital in 410 praised Yazdegerd for his action and declared the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, Isaac, to be the head (“catholicos”) of the Persian church. But unlike the situation in the Roman world, this edict of toleration would bring no lasting political favor toward Christianity, and the Persian church would live with an uncertain relationship to the state for the rest of its history.13

Persian Christian Responses to Persecution

The responses of Persian Christians to the Great Persecution are especially noteworthy in three ways, all of which stand in partial contrast to the earlier responses of Roman Christians to their Great Persecution.

First, in Persia, we have no evidence of the subversive maneuvering that seems to have been common farther west. In the Roman empire, we have stories of Christians who, when imperial officials came for their copies of the Scriptures, either gave the officials the runaround by sending them to one church member after another (in the hope that they would give up before finding any copies), or handed over heretical writings rather than the Scriptures, or in one case even turned in a medical textbook in the hope that the official either couldn’t read or wouldn’t care as long as he could show some confiscated writing for his efforts.14 No such accounts survive from Persia. Perhaps the Persian Christians were just as cunning as many Roman believers, and we happen to not possess the evidence. Or perhaps they were genuinely more heroic.

Second, we have a good deal of evidence of Persian Christians “voting with their feet” — attempting to read the political situation and migrating to areas they thought would give them more freedom to practice their faith. Such migration actually began even before the Great Persian Persecution. In the third century, when Rome was suspicious of Christians and Persia was more tolerant of them, the Persian church moved its center of operations from Edessa (on the disputed border between the empires) east to Nisibis and even southeast to the Persian capital Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Then as the axe fell on Persian Christians in the fourth century, a number of them — including their most famous theologian/poet Ephrem the Syrian — moved back to the Roman orbit in response to the new political reality.

Even more strikingly, at the height of the Persian Persecution in 345, a group of some four hundred Persian Christians arrived on India’s Malabar Coast (southwestern India) to join the Christians who were already there. These newcomers seem to have been fleeing the Great Persian Persecution, and their presence in India forged bonds between Indian and Persian Christianity that would remain, to some degree, until the present day.15

Third, Persian Christians steeled themselves for resistance and suffering. We have a series of homilies from the pen of a fourth-century Persian writer named Aphrahat, and part of his purpose in preaching these sermons was clearly to encourage Christians who could not escape the hand of Shapur by fleeing Persia. Aphrahat recounted numerous examples of persecution from the Bible, emphasizing that God was still present with his people in the midst of their trials.16 Then surprisingly, he added to these biblical exemplars of heroic suffering for the faith a much more recent one:

Concerning our brethren who are in the West, in the days of Diocletian there came great affliction and persecution to the whole Church of God, which was in all their region. The Churches were overthrown and uprooted, and many confessors and martyrs made confession. And [the Lord] turned in mercy to them after they were persecuted.17

Aphrahat concluded that the church in Persia also had the opportunity to make confession in the midst of its own persecution.

This homily shows a remarkable degree of hope in the midst of a terrible ordeal, but it also demonstrates an equally noteworthy sense of solidarity with Christians in the Roman world. This solidarity is all the more striking since Rome and Persia were mortal enemies at the time, and since few Western Christians then were aware of their sisters and brothers in the Persian world.

Remembering the Persecuted

Most of us know that the Romans dramatically changed their attitude toward Christianity in the early fourth century, but in this essay we have seen that Persia did so as well — in the opposite direction. Shapur’s name is not as well-known as Diocletian’s or Constantine’s, but perhaps it should be. In fact, the very conversion of the Roman empire that brought persecution to an end in the West was one of the main reasons for the persecution of Christians farther east.

The situation of believers was drastically different at various times, and even in different places at the same time. Believers had to make their way through life in the midst of constant uncertainty about the attitude of the government and the surrounding society to their faith. When they could, they sought out regimes that were friendly to Christianity. When necessary, they steeled themselves to face persecution by remembering the sufferings of God’s people in Scripture and Christian history elsewhere. Church-state relationships have always been complicated, changing, and replete with challenges.

As a result, it is important for us not to use too narrow a lens as we examine the impact of political and social forces on Christians. In the fourth century, what was proclaimed in the West to be a miracle and a spectacular blessing led fairly directly to untold suffering for Christians outside the Roman world. Yet, so far as we know, Christians in Persia harbored no ill will toward their newly blessed Roman brothers and sisters. Instead, the Persian believers leaned on the Romans’ example of endurance in suffering as they bore down to suffer in their turn.

“There may come a time when Western Christians must again suffer greatly under persecution.”

Today as well, most of the Christians who suffer grievously for the faith do so in eastern and southern lands (especially the Middle East and eastern Africa), not in western ones. Today the persecutors are not the Persians, but often the Muslim Arabs who conquered Persia (and all of western Asia and northern Africa) in the seventh and eighth centuries. But the Christians who suffer persecution today have a long history of bearing it with patience and as much grace as possible. They have seen this before, and their history is full of stories that help to sustain them.

Meanwhile, we in the West suffer very little, if at all, for the faith. Will we learn the stories of our brothers and sisters in the East, both then and now? Will we stand against the great injustices done to them by societies opposed to the gospel, even as we stand against the much smaller injuries perhaps done against us by our societies that have largely turned their back on Christ? After all, there may come a time when Western Christians must again suffer greatly under persecution, and we will need to be ready.