Cost – An amount paid or required in payment for a purchase; a price.
This is the first part of a series called “Cost.” I will be sharing stories of men and women who paid a price to follow Christ. These stories have made an impact on my life.
Today, I’m going to share a story that was before the time of Christ. It is a very important, powerful, and sobering story about seven brothers.
These brothers lived in 168 BC (168 years before the birth of Jesus) during the Maccabees period. At this time, Antiochus Epiphanes was the king of Syria. He had an abnormal love for all things Greek, and saw himself as a missionary for the Greek way of life.
Antiochus, during this time, attacked Jerusalem. It is said that 80,000 Jews were killed and 10,000 sold into captivity. He plundered the Temple. On the altar of the Temple, he sacrificed pig’s flesh to Zeus and he turned the Temple chambers into brothels.
He completely forbade circumcision and the possession of the Scriptures and of the law. He ordered the Jews to eat meats which were unclean and to sacrifice to the Greek gods. Inspectors went throughout the land to see that these orders were carried out. And if any were found to defy them, they underwent great miseries and bitter torments. Never in all history has there been such a deliberate attempt to wipe out a people’s religion.
Now we come to the seven brothers:
They were brought before Antiochus and ordered to eat pig’s flesh, being threatened with horrible penalties if they refused. They were confronted with ‘wheels and joint-dislocators, rack and hooks and catapults and caldrons, braziers and thumb-screws and iron claws and wedges and bellows’.
The first brother refused. They lashed him with whips and tied him to the wheel until he was dislocated and fractured in every limb. ‘They spread fire under him, and while fanning the flames they tightened the wheel further. The wheel was completely smeared in blood., and the heap of coals was being quenched by the drippings of gore, and pieces of flesh were falling off the axles of the machine.’ But he withstood their tortures and died faithful.
The second brother they bound to the catapults. They put on spiked iron gloves.’These leopard like beasts tore out sinews with the iron hands, flayed all his flesh up to his chin and tore away his scalp.’ He, too, died faithful.
The third brother was brought forward. Enraged by the man’s boldness, the officers ‘disjointed his hands and feet with their instruments, dismembering him by prying his limbs from their sockets and breaking his fingers and arms and legs and elbows’. In the end, they tore him apart on the catapult and flayed him alive. He, too, died faithful.
They cut out the tongue of the forth brother before they submitted him to the same tortures. The fifth brother they bound to the wheel, bending his body his body around the edge of it, and then fastened him with iron fetters to the catapult and tore him to pieces. The sixth they broke upon the wheel ‘and he was roasted from underneath. To his back they applied sharp spits that had been heated in the fire, and pierced his ribs so that his entrails were burned through.’ The seventh brother they roasted alive in a gigantic brazier. These, too, died faithful.
Why do I write about these men? It was due to the faithfulness and the lives of these men and others that the Jewish religion was not completely destroyed. If that religion had been destroyed, what would have happened to the purposes of God? How could Jesus have been born into the world if Judaism had ceased to exist? In a very real way, we owe our Christianity to these martyrs.
We would do well to remember them, and the price they had to pay.
God Bless,
John
Global Response Network 