If I Perish

“Go, assemble all the Jews who are found in Susa, and fast for me; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maidens also will fast in the same way. And thus I will go in to the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish.”  Esther 4:16

This is the courageous testimony of Queen Ester as she prepared to risk her own life in order to save the lives of her people. It was a capital crime for anyone to intrude into the king’s throne room unbidden, but she was willing to do so in order to do the will of God, knowing that “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

In the same spirit, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were willing to enter the fiery furnace rather than to worship the humanistic gods of Babylon, testifying to Nebuchadnezzar that “our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up” (Daniel 3:17-18).

God did deliver Esther and the three Jewish youths, but there have been many through the ages who have died for their faith rather than deny their faith. All the apostles (except John) died as martyrs, for example, and so have countless others through the centuries. “They did not love their life even when faced with death” (Rev. 12:11) - if it meant denying their Savior.

Believers in many nations are suffering such persecutions even today, and the time is coming when the last great God-rejecting king of the earth (called the “beast” in Scripture) will “cause as many as do not worship the image of the beast to be killed” (Rev. 13:15). If a similar choice should ever confront us, may God give us the grace to say with Paul that “Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death” (Phil. 1:20), and with Esther: “if I perish, I perish.”