Even children made the ultimate sacrifice. A story is told of a Christian mother who was thrown to the lions in a Roman arena because she gave her ultimate allegiance to Christ and not the state. Her young daughter had to look on the cruel scene. But instead of shrinking back in horror, she felt a fervent devotion welling up inside. As the lions attacked her mother, she stood up and cried, “I too am a Christian.” Roman officials arrested her on the spot and hurled her to the hungry beasts.

Tertullian, a church leader in the second century, said of Christians: “The working of such love puts a brand upon us, for ‘See,’ say the heathen, ‘how they love one another, and are ready to lay down their lives for each other.’”

Christians who kept biblical truth in the face of death are an inspiring example. Here’s an account of the ordeal of believers who insisted on practicing baptism by immersion as taught in Scripture:

“In 1160 a company of Paulicians (Baptists) entered Oxford. Henry II ordered them to be branded on the forehead with hot irons, publicly whipped them through the streets of the city, cut their garments short at the girdles, and turned them into open country. The villages were not to afford them any shelter or food and they perished a lingering death from cold and hunger.”—Moore, Earlier and Later Nonconformity in Oxford, page 12.