Testimony

Remember The Martyrs · Sunday 1 November 2026

I just want to say thank you to the pastor for last night - the teaching and the display were really, really interesting and really enjoyable. I want to add to it, because we watched all about the Reformation: these brave people, strong in faith, burnt alive, all sorts of horrific things done to them.

The Reformation started in central Europe, mainly in Germany - a little in Spain, a little in France, quite a bit in the Netherlands, a little in Switzerland, but mainly Germany - and a lot of the reformers there had some protection and could move around fairly freely. But it was all about control: the Catholic Church of that day ruling by fear, by lies and by violence.

When I got home I started watching more on YouTube and got really into it. A lot of you know that before I was connected with this church, my ideology was pretty terrible. I was fiercely patriotic, fiercely proud to be British and English, and that drifted away with this church - land is land, sea is sea, God is God everywhere. But then He showed me the Union flag, and all the crosses in the flag, and a lot of messages that made me proud again - but in a different way. Last night He made me proud of the Reformation, of our culture and our identity.

Because when the Reformation started in Europe, who was the first country to break away and become officially Protestant? England. And the second? Scotland. England first, Scotland second - they led the world. I believe God blessed this land and guided it, and the devil did everything to stop it. He brought in a queen who did evil things, but God sorted her out. He sent invaders, many, many times, and they never made it - God protected the land. He sent the Gunpowder Plot. He tried and tried, and every time God overturned it and blessed the land, and he's still trying now.

So I'm really proud that this country has been blessed like this - but think of the horrendous things those people went through to change our lives, so that this church can be free. Before the Reformation, a pope told our archbishop what to do, and told our monarch, and they did it. The only control over this church is God, through the pastor. We're really blessed. You're really lucky to have this church.

And I want to talk about persecution. People talk about how Christians in Britain are persecuted on the streets, but what we go through is nothing compared with what we've learned - people burned at the stake who would not give in, who sang praises to God. I want you to think that this is actually happening every day, just as bad: horrific deaths, kidnappings, torture - Iran, Afghanistan, China, many, many countries. There were around 300 martyrs under Bloody Mary; there are thousands of martyrs every week now. I want you to think of them and pray for them all around the world, because Christians are being martyred every single day.

So I want you to know how blessed you are that God has put us in this land, kept us safe, and brought all of us to this church - where we have freedom of fellowship, where we can worship freely without religion, without repeating the same thing every week. We're in a church led by the Spirit, who leads the pastor, who leads us to God, telling us what we need to know - not some ideology telling us we must do this and must do that, or that we're going to hell, through lies and violence and trickery.

I just want you to know how thankful I am for this church, how thankful I am to have a pastor like we've got, how thankful I am for last night, and how thankful I am that God sent those people to set us free so that we would know the truth. I can't tell you what to do, but I'm going to really start praying now for all the martyrs in all the countries who are dying every single day.

I was also reading about when Mary became queen: lots of people refused to take the Catholic Mass. They were tried as heretics. Many of them were serfs - very simple people who couldn't read or write. Many were women, or even children. They stood their ground, they would not take the Mass, and they met horrific deaths. I think we should remember that. Because of their sacrifice, and because they stood fast, I believe God has blessed this country. There are a lot of things wrong with this country and with the world, but it could be so much worse. You could be somewhere where, if you were a Christian or owned a Bible, you would seriously know about it. Here we can have Bibles. Yes, we get a bit of persecution and a bit of ridicule, but it's absolutely nothing compared with other places in the world. Amen.

— A believer at GCC