{"id":5342,"date":"2017-11-12T10:00:12","date_gmt":"2017-11-12T15:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/?post_type=ctc_sermon&#038;p=5342"},"modified":"2026-01-29T14:37:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T19:37:05","slug":"the-first-martyr-acts-68-84","status":"publish","type":"ctc_sermon","link":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/sermons\/the-first-martyr-acts-68-84\/","title":{"rendered":"The First Martyr &#8211; Acts 6:8 &#8211; 8:4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">As a result of Stephen\u2019s death, there breaks out a great persecution against the Church; which results in a great dispersion of the Church; which results in widespread evangelism by the Church.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Despite the attempts to smother the gospel, the gospel spreads further still.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Like trying to blow out a fire but instead only spreading sparks further outwards, persecution of the Church only spreads to further its witness in the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Stephen\u2019s death was not in vain because a life lived for Christ, and a life given for Christ, is never a life lived or given in vain. As the Apostle <\/span><span class=\"s1\">Paul, who was present at Stephen&#8217;s death, would write years later: \u201cTo live is Christ; to die is gain.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a result of Stephen\u2019s death, there breaks out a great persecution against the Church; which results in a great dispersion of the Church; which results in widespread evangelism by the Church.\u00a0Despite the attempts to smother the gospel, the gospel spreads further still.\u00a0Like trying to blow out a fire but instead only spreading sparks further outwards, persecution of the Church only spreads to further its witness in the world.\u00a0 Stephen\u2019s death was not in vain because a life lived for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5935,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"ctc_sermon_topic":[],"ctc_sermon_book":[68],"ctc_sermon_series":[122],"ctc_sermon_speaker":[64],"ctc_sermon_tag":[],"class_list":["post-5342","ctc_sermon","type-ctc_sermon","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ctc_sermon_book-acts","ctc_sermon_series-ends-of-the-earth","ctc_sermon_speaker-jeff-cottone","ctfw-has-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/5342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ctc_sermon"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5342"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/5342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10001,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/5342\/revisions\/10001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_topic?post=5342"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_book","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_book?post=5342"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_series?post=5342"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_speaker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_speaker?post=5342"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_tag?post=5342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}