Christians‟ Response to Persecution: Its Implications to Contemporary Churches in Nigeria

The series of crises reported daily on local, national and international media on killing and destruction of Christians and properties worth millions of naira is alarming. Christian persecution in today’s world has taken a dangerous trend that warrants academic discourse. Persecution has become a serious challenge which has turned to global threat. The church has suffered much security challenges from people of opposing religious faith, who felt threatened by the unique presence of God, convincing miracles, power-oriented and dominating spirituality, unparalleled missionary spirit, and more significantly, her particularistic doctrinal claims. The paper appraisingly evaluates the response of the church in the Bible, especially in the New Testament during the time of Apostles in (Acts 4:23-31). For this reason, this paper adopted historic narrative and exegetical approaches. The paper, postulates re- integrating, internalizing and implementing the importance of prayer, unity, righteous living and boldness in the contemporary church. This paper discusses how Christians should respond during the time of persecution from within and without and proffer recommendations that will reduce to barest minimum the persecution of Christian throughout the world.

Keywords: Christians’ Response, Persecution, and church.