Shall many be offended. The persecutions directed against the disciples in general shall in many cases result in overcoming their steadfastness and sapping their faith. Shall betray one another. To curry favour with enemies and to secure their own safety in troublous times, Christians were found to inform against friends, and to deliver them up to the civil authorities.
Tacitus notes instances of this degrading cowardice. "First those were seized who confessed that they were Christians; and then on their information a vast multitude was convicted" ('Ann.,' 15.44). Shall hate one another.
Dissensions in religion cause the most bitter hatred, the very opposite of that love which is the essence of Christianity (John 15:17). Where one of a pagan family embraced Christianity, the convert was regarded as an outcast, and cut adrift from the nearest domestic ties.
The same treatment obtains even now in India. The reference in the text chiefly concerns contentions among professing Christians; we see such effects every day; they appear in every page of ecclesiastical history; they have stained the annals of our own and every nation.