Who else had his boldness in confronting the lost with the claims of Christ? But God immediately raised up a successor. Right after Stephen died, the church must have felt that he was irreplaceable. There is an old saying: "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church." Pioneering Ministry of Philip The church has always become stronger as a result of persecution. It is just the prelude to something good that God will accomplish through it. We would be foolish to deny that it is evil when believers go to jail or die because of their faith. Here is an illustration of the principle that in the experience of God’s children, He always brings good out of evil. The persecution was God's tool for scattering believers and pushing the gospel to new places. Thus, although the persecution made it seem that the forces of evil were triumphing, the real victor was the church. He said, "Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:8). As a result, assemblies of believers appeared throughout Judea and Samaria, the first two places that Jesus commanded the church to reach after evangelizing Jerusalem.
Wherever they went, they preached "the word." They won people to Christ who never would have heard the gospel if the church had remained shut up in one city. Afterward, believers were scattered throughout Palestine. Before all the trouble, the church was almost entirely confined to one place. But in fact, the persecution assisted the work of the gospel.
They probably pleaded with God to bind their enemies so that the work of the gospel might go forward. While the persecution was underway, the church probably felt that the cause of Christ was suffering a setback. Why did God allow evil men to trouble His beloved church?