In Acts 12 we have a case of one apostle dying for his faith and another being miraculously delivered.
King Herod arrested some of the church, and has James, the brother of John, killed. He saw that this pleased the Jews so he Peter seized. But an angel leads Peter out of prison.
We have to realise that God is faithful when he delivers us and faithful when he lets us pass through the storm. He was equally faithful to James and Peter.
We have to also realise that we may not understand for the moment what God's plan in a trial are. When Stephen was martyred it led to the church spreading out from Jerusalem, but we have no explanation for James death.
Our challenge in any difficulty is to be faithful. Ajith Fernando says that people responded to the troubles in Sri Lanka in one of five ways. Firstly, there were those who delighted in deliverances, like when a bomb landed on someone's house and did not go off, or an angry mob turned back from attacking the home of a Christian. Then there those who suffered great loss, but remained faithful to God. Sadly, there were those who belonged to the church who experienced pain and became bitter, turning away from God. There were those who compromised their faith, like lying to visa officers to get out of the country. Finally, there were those who had no interest in God during the good times as they pursued wealth, but when all was stripped away they turned instead to God.
This passage also reminds us of the ministry of angels. I want to mention two stories of the roles of angels - one in a situation where God allowed his people die and the other in a situation of miraculous rescue.
In 1956, five missionaries to the Auca Indians were killed in the jungles of Ecuador by those they were trying to reach with the gospel. It was later discovered that those missionaries had guns. They could have shot their assailants but refused to do so. They did shot in the air to frighten them, but the missionaries were determined to hurt no one. Their unwillingness to compromise cost them their lives. The Auca Indians were struck by this, and this contributed to their later conversion to Jesus. It was also later reported by the Aucas that at the time of these killings they saw a multitude of angels in the sky and heard them singing.
John G. Paton was a Scottish missionary to the New Hebrides Islands in the South Pacific. One night the local tribesmen surrounded his mission headquarters, intent on burning it and killing Patton and his wife. The two of them prayed all through that terrifying night, asking God to deliver them. When daylight came they were surprised to see their attackers leave. A year later, the chief of the tribe was converted to Christ, and Paton had the opportunity to ask him what had kept them from burning the house and killing them. The chief replied, 'who were all those men with you?'
Paton replied, 'there were no men there, only my wife and I.' But the chief said that they had seen hundreds of big men in shining garments with drawn swords in their hands. They seemed to circle the mission station, so that the tribesmen were afraid to attack. Patton realised that God had sent his angels to protect them.
But Patton did not always experience such miraculous deliverance. His first wife died as a result of problems during childbirth. Seventeen days later the baby also died. This happened early in his missionary career, and he had no one to comfort him. He even had to dig the graves for his wife and child. Yet he writes about that time, 'I was never altogether forsaken. The ever merciful God sustained me to lay the precious dust of my loved ones in the same quiet grave. But for Jesus, and the fellowship he vouchsafed me there, I must have gone mad and died beside that lonely grave.'
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