When The Heathen Rage Series

“When The Heathen Rage”

Acts 4:23-31

Life is always good, right???

What happens when you are persecuted for doing nothing wrong, but simply sharing with others what the Lord has done.

We have a great example before us to consider the next time you are sharing a testimony and others decide to make life ruff for us.

Illustration:

There were 40 Roman soldiers, in the famed Twelfth Legion of Rome’s imperial army; and in AD 320 Emperor Licinius had sent down an edict commanding all soldiers to offer a sacrifice to his pagan god. Forty of the soldiers were followers of Christ, who refused to renounce Christ. They were stripped naked and taken to a frozen lake near Sebaste (present-day Sivas in Turkey). They were instructed that if they renounced Christ, they would be freed and taken to a hot bath nearby in order to recover. Throughout the night the men stayed together, singing their song of victory.

The 40 soldiers persevered until one man relented. He renounced Christ and was taken to the hot baths to warm up, leaving 39 soldiers on the ice. However, one of the guards watching the 39 saw the supernatural glory resting on these 39 confessors of Christ; he stripped naked and joined them on the ice, thereby restoring the number to 40.

William Borden:

In 1904 William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school. As an heir to his family's fortune, he was already wealthy and for his high school graduation present, William Borden's parents gave their 16-year-old son a trip around the world. As the young man traveled through Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, he felt a growing burden for the world's hurting people. Finally, William Borden wrote home about his "desire to be a missionary".

One friend expressed disbelief that Bill was "throwing himself away as a missionary."

A story often associated with Borden says that, in response, William wrote two words in the back of his Bible: "No reserves."

During his first semester at Yale, Borden started something that would transform campus life. One of his friends described how it began: "It was well on in the first term when Bill and I began to pray together in the morning before breakfast.

Borden's small Morning Prayer group gave birth to a movement that soon spread across the campus. By the end of his first year, 150 freshmen were meeting weekly for Bible study and prayer. By the time William Borden was a senior, one thousand of Yale's 1,300 students were meeting in such groups.

Borden's missionary call narrowed to the Muslim Kansu people in China. Fixing his eyes on that goal, Borden never wavered. He also challenged his classmates to consider foreign missionary service. One of them said of him: “He certainly was one of the strongest characters I have ever known, and he put backbone into the rest of us at college. There was real iron in him, and I always felt he was of the stuff martyrs were made of, and heroic missionaries of more modern times.”

Upon graduation from Yale, Borden turned down some high-paying job offers. It has been reported that William Borden wrote two more words in his Bible: "No retreats."

William Borden went on to do graduate work at Princeton Seminary in New Jersey. When he finished his studies at Princeton, he sailed for China. Because Borden hoped to work with Muslims in China, he went first to Egypt to study Arabic. While there, he contracted spinal meningitis. Within a month, 25-year-old William Borden was dead.

When the news of William Whiting Borden's death was cabled back to the U.S., the story was carried by nearly every American newspaper. "A wave of sorrow went round the world . . . Borden not only gave (away) his wealth, but himself, in a way so joyous and natural that it (seemed) a privilege rather than a sacrifice," wrote Taylor in her introduction to his biography.

Was Borden's untimely death a waste? Not from God's perspective. Prior to his death, Borden had written two more words in the back of his Bible. Underneath the words "No reserves" and "No retreats," he is reported to have written: "No regrets."

Buried in a forgotten cemetery in Cairo Egypt and left un-attended as a Christian Cemetery lies the body of William Borden but never forgotten to those he touched with the Gospel message.

Jim Elliott, another promising young missionary killed in his prime, could confidently say some 40 years later, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

I am not here to recruit anyone into the ministry; but I do remind you that the cost of serving the Lord can seem to be very high.

But not in Christ.

In Christ it is a little sacrifice to give one’s life into God’s will.