The Hole is Dead
“Now I begin to be a disciple. I care for nothing of visible or invisible things so that I may but win Christ. Let fire and the cross, let the companies of wild beasts, let breaking of bones and tearing of limbs, let the grinding of the whole body, and all the malice of the devil, come upon me;
“Be it so, only may I win Christ Jesus.”
—Ignatius, A.D. 110, in The New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs by John Foxe
A man stood in the arena. He looked around. Before him stretched a round sandy floor, enclosed by a wall of glistening limestone. Several large wooden doors surrounded the floor of the arena, with small slits in the center of each door. Large gashes, likely from swords or animal claws, decorated the interior of the stadium.
Above the walls were rows of stone seating, filled with thousands upon thousands of people. Cheering, screaming, throwing food, the audience seemed to have an indifference to what was about to happen. They only cared about the fight.
The doors lining the wall of the arena slowly began creak open. Behind them menacing growls and screeches could be heard. Hoofs scraping the ground, heads tossing, rebelling against the restraints of their cages. The animals were hungry.
Seeing the fight was about to begin, the volume of the crowd increased to a roar, sending tremors through the foundations of the arena. The gates opened wide, and out came wild, underfed lions and strong bulls ready to gore anything or anyone in their path.
The man continued to stand in the center of the arena. He had no weapon; no sword, no spear, no arrow, not even a rock to defend himself. His fate was sealed.
Yet as the lions spotted their next meal, and the bulls their next person to decapitate, the man simply sat on his knees. Looking up at the blood thirsty crowd, and the fiendish sparks in their eyes, glancing about him at the open jaws of the lions and the horns of the bulls, he said this:
“I am the wheat of Christ; I am going to be ground with the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread.”
The man’s name was Ignatius, and he had done nothing wrong besides being a leader of the church in Antioch, the capital of Syria at the time. Had he simply renounced his Christian faith, he would have been saved from this terrible fate. Had he simply sprinkled incense on the altar of a Roman god, the judges would have pardoned him.
Yet he refused, and death by wild animals was the consequence.
Of all the martyrs that suffered torture and persecution at the hands of the Romans, Ignatius’s was really one of the least painful. Others “had their feet crushed in presses, then forced to walked over thorns, nails…” or were “whipped until their sinews and veins were exposed...” or were “stretched upon a wheel until all [their] bones were broken and then beheaded.”
Nearly every martyr during the Roman persecutions was given the opportunity to recant; to bow down to the Roman gods rather than believe in Christ. If they simply spoke the words, no torture or punishment would ensue. Yet very few did. Despite the intense pain and suffering before them, they refused to give in and renounce their faith. As a result, thousands died.
Couldn’t they just have said they didn’t believe? How absurd is it that thousands upon thousands of lives could have been saved simply by saying a couple words!
Yet that is what happened.
The question, then, is why?
Works Cited
The New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Rewritten and Updated by Harold J. Chadwick, 1997