My Comment:  What are they so afraid of?  By they I mean all those who are trying to change history.  In our country they are furiously trying to wipe history clean of everything sacred, including this, and the history of the founding of our country, etc.  The Middle East is trying to wipe the history of Israel clean.  Both Daniel and Paul prophesied about this, in describing the end times government leader know as the ‘Lawless one’ or the Anti-Christ.  Christ say’s many will come in his name.  2 Thessalonians 2:9-11  ‘The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of SATAN displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders.  And in every sort of evil that DECEIVES those who are perishing.  They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.  For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.’

(The Blaze)  Dr. Candida Moss, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, captured attention earlier this year with the publication of her book, “The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom.” From the title, alone, you can discern that the subject matter is controversial. Moss, a practicing Catholic and an expert on Christianity, contends that the early church “exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs.”

Certainly advancing some bold claims, the professor holds that the so-called “Age of Martyrs” was, at least in part, fictional. This was the time-frame before Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in the fourth century — a period during which many allege that believers were brutally murdered by Roman authorities. Stories are often told today of the plight that these individuals faced.

But Moss believes that many of these narratives were exaggerations used to push back against heretics, to inspire believers and to gain support for church funding. With the purported tales continuing to be told, the professor is attempting to set straight a record she believes to be intensely inaccurate. TheBlaze interviewed Moss to gain more information about her perspective.

THEBLAZE: Why do you believe that this so-called “myth” of martyrdom developed within the Christian faith?

MOSS: First, I would like to establish what this myth is, and what it isn’t. It is the idea that Christians were continually persecuted for their beliefs; it is not a denial of all Christian martyrs from Antiquity today.

The reason we think that they were constantly persecuted is because later Christians exaggerated the numbers of martyrs and the severity of the persecutions in order to entertain, educate, and combat heresy. There wasn’t necessarily anything malicious about this; they were using the heroes of the faith to speak to the issues of their own day in the same way that we use the founding fathers to educate our children.

THEBLAZE: What led you to write “The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom”?

MOSS: Well, I had already written two other books concerning the importance of Biblical and early Church traditions about sufferings for Christianity. I wrote this book because a lot of Christian groups and individuals today refer to themselves as persecuted just like Jesus and the early Christians. Often they will talk about how Christians have always been persecuted and point to the Roman emperors as the start of that process.

Historians unanimously agree that this isn’t true, but we haven’t done a good job of conveying this to a wider audience. I wanted to change that and present the historical evidence for actual persecution and martyrdom in a form that’s accessible to everyone.

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Categories: news

Tags: antichrist, deceipt, persecution, whoppers