Fit to Represent, Vision for Discipleship Seminar

Appendix I: Bible and Theology ▪ 83

Suffering for the Gospel The Cost of Discipleship and Servant Leadership Rev. Dr. Don L. Davis

To embrace the Gospel and not to be shamed of it (Rom. 1.16) is to bear the stigma and reproach of the One who called you into service (2 Tim. 3.12). Practically, this may mean the loss of comfort, convenience, and even life itself (John 12.24-25). As ambassadors of Christ, appealing to men and women to come to him, we must not even count our lives as dear to ourselves, but be ever willing to lay our very lives down for the Good News (Acts 20.24). All of Christ’s apostles endured insults, rebukes, lashes, and rejections by the enemies of their Master (cf. 2 Cor. 6, 11). Each of them sealed their calling to Christ and to his doctrines with their blood in exile, torture, and martyrdom. Listed below are the fates of the apostles according to traditional accounts. • suffered martyrdom by being slain with a sword at a distant Matthew city of Ethiopia. • expired at Alexandria, after being cruelly dragged through the Mark streets of that city.

• was hanged upon an olive tree in the land of Greece. Luke

• was put in a caldron of boiling oil, but escaped death in a John miraculous manner, and was afterward exiled to and branded at Patmos. • was crucified at Rome in an inverted position, with his head Peter downward.

• , was beheaded at Jerusalem. James, the Greater

• , was thrown from a lofty pinnacle of the temple, and James, the Less then beaten to death with a fuller’s club.

was flayed alive. Bartholomew

•

• was bound to a cross, where he preached to his persecutors until Andrew he died. • was run through the body with a lance at Coromandel in the Thomas East Indies.