Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. – Acts 14:22

No other faith of mankind, religious or political, has quite so extensive a record of violent bitter opposition to its growth than the Christian church.
– Kenneth Scott Latourette

It may seem strange that Jesus should pass from peacemaking to persecution, from the work of reconciliation to the experience of hostility. Yet however hard we may try to make peace with some people, they refuse to live at peace with us. Not all attempts at reconciliation succeed. Indeed, some take the initiative to oppose us, and in particular to revile or slander us. This is not because of our foibles or idiosyncrasies, but ‘for righteousness’ sake and ‘on Jesus’ account’, that is, because they find distasteful the righteousness for which we hunger and thirst, and because they have rejected the Christ we seek to follow. Persecution is simply the clash between two irreconcilable value-systems. – John Stott

“Rejoice and be glad!” What can justify such counsel to people in pain? I see two possibilities: either this is the talk of an insensitive, ivory tower theologian who has never known what it is to scream with pain, or this is the talk of one who has seen
something and tasted something and knows something about a reality that most of us have never tasted or glimpsed. – John Piper