Death, be not proud!

Paul no longer killed for God; but he had learned that he needed to be willing to be killed for God. It is this type of leadership and this narrative that allows minority Jewish and Christian groups to continue to survive in the face of acute pressures from the powers that rule pagan-majority cultures. Church leaders must be prepared to stand firm whatever the cost inflicted on them—the story of the martyr. This is Political Survival 101. The church remembered Paul as someone who would endure prison, which meant enduring arrest, intimidation, interrogation, trial, and the threat of punishment. In so doing it was equipped to survive everything the Roman Empire, and every other empire, could fling at it.—Paul: An Apostle’s Journey, 176–77