Book Review: The Martyr of the Catacombs

Today I thought I would do another book review, this time on The Martyr of the Catacombs. This book can be considered one of my very favorites, and I have read it many, many times.

This book gives you a glimpse of the bitter persecution the early Christians endured under the Roman Empire. A look at the life lived by them in the Catacombs, dark and damp, yet still trusting in their Lord, and ready to lay down their lives at any moment, when they were captured.

A young solider, Marcellus, is commissioned to go out, find and arrest Christians living in the catacombs. But instead he searches for them, seeking to know more about their faith. Four days he spent in the Catacombs with the Christians, and was converted to Christianity. When he returned he told his general of his conversion. Marcellus knew this was, under the Roman Empire, an act of treason, punishable only by death. The general said he was degraded from his office, and was to be put under arrest as a Christian. But, through a friend he escapes. He is eventually captured and put to death by fire.

Then we come to 13 year old Pollio, who lives in the Catacombs. He is eventually captured and taken to an ‘examination’ where the authorities tried to persuade him to give up his faith, and embrace the doctrine of the Romans. But he remained steadfast and unmoved, and not even the threat of death by fire could make him deny his Lord. When the authorities found him unmoved by their arguments, they doomed him to death in the arena.

When the persecution of the Christians begin in America, may we be found as faithful and steadfast as Marcellus and Pollio!
Pollio’s words were, “My faith is pure and holy. I can die, but I cannot be false to my Saviour.“

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;
And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 3:1 & 12-15

FOREWORD

An anonymous story entitled, The Martyr of the Catacombs: A Tale of Ancient Rome, was published many years ago. A copy of that book was salvaged from an American sailing vessel, commanded by Captain Richard Roberts, abandoned at sea, after a disastrous hurricane in January, 1876. It is now in the possession of his son.

This volume, bearing the same title, is a carefully edited reprint of that book, and it is now jointly sent forth in the hope that it may be used of the Lord to bring vividly before faithful and thoughtful, as well as careless and thoughtless, believers and their children, in these last and evil days, a picture of what the early saints endured for our Lord Jesus Christ, under one of the bitter persecutions of heathen Rome; and which, we believe, will surely be repeated with satanic intensity in the future, under the Roman Empire.

May it remind us all that we may, if our Lord tarry a while longer in the heavens, be called upon to suffer for His sake.

The Bible no longer has a lawful place in most of our schools and colleges; family prayer is generally a lost habit; our Lord Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten and well-beloved Son, is discredited and dishonored in the house of His professed friends; corporate testimony on earth is over; the call to Laodicea to repent is unheeded; and our Lord’s promise of communion with Him is now to the individual.

The promise to Smyrna: “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life,” may reach even unto us of these days.
The blood of the martyrs in Russia and Germany cries from the ground, a warning to Christians of every country.

But we may still send up the longing cry, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.“

– Richard L. Roberts