To help understand a phenomenon is essential when one is trying to stop the rot from occurring which I tried to do in 2007-2009, but to write after the process is in full-swing may seem a thankless and useless task.
That is why the perfection series is so important.
The typical lay Roman Christian in the year 302 and hearing reports of the arguments between Diocletian and
and Galerius as to whether the Christians should merely be discriminated against by barring them from public office and the military, or whether they should be killed outright.
I am sure rumours were flying about and some Christian merely responded by saying it would all pass. Or, that a new emperor would change things.
Duh. On February 23, 303, a church was destroyed in Rome, followed the next day by the edict forbidding any new churches and allowing for the destruction of all places of worship belonging to the Christians. Persecutions of torture and death followed quickly and lasted until 311.
The numbers of Christians killed, and the numbers who left Rome are not known. One can only estimate. The top number is 3,500 out of a population of one million Romans. This would be like 3,500 people living in Dallas being murdered systematically by the government.
Small stuff compared to Stalin. I read a long biography of him in 2008 or so and he was a scary man.
The figure comes from the book by Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties(Macmillan 1968). In his appendix on casualty figures, he reviews a number of estimates of those that were killed under Stalin, and calculates that the number of executions 1936 to 1938 was probably about 1,000,000; that from 1936 to 1950 about 12,000,000 died in the camps; and 3,500,000 died in the 1930-1936 collectivization. Overall, he concludes:
Thus we get a figure of 20 million dead, which is almost certainly too low and might require an increase of 50 percent or so, as the debit balance of the Stalin regime for twenty-three years.
http://www.distributedrepublic.net/archives/2006/05/01/how-many-did-stalin-really-murder/
Therefore, in the face of a growing menace, some fight, which is excellent, but all must prepare spiritually. This means becoming holy. Really holy.
To be continued....