Persecution
Illustration★★★★Do people treat you like dirt? God took a lump of dirt and transformed it into a man. Pliny the Younger (A.D. 62-113) to emperor Trajan: The method I have observed towards those who have been denounced as Christians is this: I interrogated them whether they are Christians; if they confessed it I repeated the question twice again, adding the threat of capital punishment; if they still persevered, I ordered them to be executed ...
Those who denied they were or had ever been, Christians, who repeated after me an invocation to the gods, and who offered adoration, with wine and frankincense, to your image ... and who finally cursed Christ – none of which acts, it is said, those who are really Christians can be forced into performing – these I thought it proper to discharge ... Nero lit his gardens by wrapping Christians in pitch and setting them alight. He sewed others into animal skins and set his dogs on them to tear them apart.
Others were tortured on the rack or scraped with pincers. Molten lead was poured on them, their eyes were torn out, red hot brass plates fixed to the most sensitive parts of their bodies, parts of their bodies cut off and roasted in front of them, hands and feet burned while cold water was poured on them to prolong the pain.
The point
Early Christian martyrs endured horrific torture under Nero and Trajan rather than deny Christ, their willingness to die proving the power of their faith.