The movement had gained martyrs and had successfully waged one more battle in Jehovah God’s war.” —The Nazi State and the New Religions: Five Case Studies in Non-Conformity, page 193.
Like their first-century counterparts, these 20th-century faithful martyrs have boldly borne witness that Jehovah is the only true God, who is worthy of our unswerving faith and loyalty.—Revelation 4:11.
Despite that witness, Jesus was condemned and executed, dying an agonizing martyr’s death on a torture stake. —Matthew 27:24-26; Mark 15:15; Luke 23:24, 25; John 19:13-16.
14 As Paul shows, those of the anointed remnant alive today do not get into the Kingdom ahead of those earlier faithful anointed Christian martyrs and disciples.
(1 Corinthians 15:13-19; Romans 3:23, 24; Hebrews 9:11-14) And Christians who had “fallen asleep in death,” in some cases as martyrs, had perished without a genuine hope.
The Bible record states that immediately after the martyring of Stephen, “Saul [later known as Paul] . . . began to deal outrageously with the congregation.
But they evidently did exist in the second century, and Justin Martyr confidently challenged his readers to check them to verify the truth of what he said.