Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented-- of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. (Hebrews 11:36-38, NKJV).
The most famous and significant recorded act of human torture was inflicted upon Jesus by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. The account, un-sensationalized and succinct, appears in all four Gospels, and is referred to in several other New Testament citations.
This heinous episode included public mockery, verbal abuse, spitting, beatings, scourging with a flagellum to the point of having His skin stripped down to the bone, and ended with horrific crucifixion.
Subsequent to His death and Resurrection, Christ's followers were subject to similar fates, all at the behest of religious leaders, civil authorities, or riotous mobs. Underlying each instance was the manifestation of a Satanic strategy to make faith in Christ too costly to maintain.
In reality, and in opposition to the intent, what these despicable acts proved is that anything other than faith in Christ is a hopeless palliative in the face of eternal condemnation in Hell.
That was the perspective of those martyrs mentioned here in this verse. They withstood all, by the grace of God, because they believed that what awaited them in Heaven so outweighed the manner of their physical deaths that endurance was the only real option available to them.
The alternative was literally unimaginable.
Were they just plain crazy, dying hideously for what much of the world views a myth, or an allegory, or a pious fabrication? Today, an honest skeptic must concede these martyrs' intensity of belief, since it is difficult to picture a man dying for something he knows to be a lie. So the only conclusions left are insanity, or true faith.
Of those two, insanity is the least likely, especially in regard to those victims for whom we have actual written and historical evidence. If they were lunatics, there is no corroborating indication in the documented contemporary accounts, or in the martyrs' own writings, where they exist.
Logically, that leaves only faith as an explanation. Now it is admittedly possible to sincerely believe error, but that then begs the question as to what would motivate others to follow in such a risky venture after being warned of the possible consequences, as here in the Book of Hebrews?
If the beliefs were so dead wrong, and potentially dangerous, answer these questions. Why are these beliefs so persistent and indestructible? Why have they impacted so much of human history?
One final question. Why is Biblical Christianity so emphatically despised by an evil and bloodthirsty world? Its tenets do not condone or teach violent conquest. It commands love and help, mercy and forgiveness, and despises a sense of personal superiority. It is, in an inarguable sense, harmless.
Except its truths, and its Divine Source, act as a scourge to the evil of this world, not by force but by drastically reformed hearts and minds. And in return, like a schoolyard bully, the world desires to scourge back in the only way that banal evil can - grossly, physically, bloodily.
Jesus warns of these very things. The world hated Him. It will also hate His followers.
The world persecuted Him. It will also persecute us.
Christ comes into the hearts, souls and minds of His children by faith and changes them fundamentally, miraculously, eternally. He ransoms us from the world so that we are no longer of the world, but only in it, and that for merely a little while.
In the end, all those who desire to live godly will suffer persecution. In the end, all who are in the world will have tribulation.
But we, like the faithful saints who died before us, are to be of good cheer, because our Lord has overcome the world.
