The Greek word for ‘persecuted’ could be translated ‘hunted’. You can see the determination of hostile people, enemies.
How easy our battle is by comparison; how very, very easy our lives are, even at worst in these days in the West. Surely we can live with this faith that the apostle had, and always look to the Lord, and pray to him. And expect that it is his method from time to time to bring us to the end of ourselves, and to produce for us obstructions so great we cannot see any way round them. And then at that moment he intervenes and he shows his mighty power and his deliverance.
It has been said and absolutely rightly, the Christian is indestructible. God will either intervene and prove that all the power is his, or even if we join the English martyrs at the time of the Reformation and perish, God will bring a mighty witness out of it. And it was on account of the English martyrs that the whole latitude and mind set of the people of England changed, and their sympathies were switched from the ruling Catholic powers to the Reformation and the teaching of the Scriptures. It was the witness of the martyrs, the blood of the martyrs that was the seed of the church.