When an 86-year-old bishop was dragged into a Roman arena, the proconsul offered him a simple choice: curse Christ and live, or refuse and burn. Polycarp's response—"Eighty-six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong"—would echo through two millennia of Christian history. This episode explores how one man's final hours in Smyrna became the template for Christian martyrdom, and what his unflinching witness reveals about the cost of faith when an empire demands your soul. Learn about the shocking details surrounding his arrest, the "supernatural" moments witnesses claimed to see in the flames, and why this elderly pastor's death became more powerful than his decades of life.

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