The Thundering Forty

But let your statement be, `Yes, yes' or `No, no'; anything beyond these is of evil.” Matthew 5:37


In the year 320, Licinius, Emperor of the East, ordered his soldiers including the Thundering Legion to denounce Christianity on pain of death.

Who was the Thundering Legion? When the Emperor Marcus Aurelius led an expedition against the Quadi in 174, his army, exhausted by thirst, was on the point of falling to the enemy. It was then that soldiers of the 12th Legion prayed to God for help. Soon a thunderstorm arose, relieving the Romans, while terrifying the barbarians. Therefore, earning them the name “thundering.”

40 of the “Thundering Legion” refused so they were stripped & herded onto a frozen lake, being told, they could come ashore when they were ready to deny their faith. They stood firm praying: “Lord, we are forty who are engaged in this combat; grant that we may be forty crowned, and that not one be wanting to this sacred number." One broke and ran to the shore. However, a guard on the bank was so moved by their commitment that he removed his clothes and joined them leaving the # at 40.

Where do you stand today?
 
Jim Cain