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THE JOY OF PERSECUTION
CHARLO, New Brunswick, July 22, 2023 – When he came out as the Messiah in his hometown synagogue, Jesus was nearly stoned to death by his fellow Nazarenes. It was only by God’s supernatural intervention that Jesus escaped unscathed.
Even so, he was cast out of his hometown from that point onward. Over the next few years, he became an outcast in several other jurisdictions as well, and in some places he became an outright outlaw. As God’s Messiah speaking God’s Word, Jesus was not welcome among most of his people, some of whom also vehemently hated him.
Jesus warned us that we would suffer the same persecution and unfounded hatred as he did if we’re authentically speaking God’s Word.
What can we take from this warning? Only what Jesus said. Christians who are not being persecuted or are not outcast and hated are not authentically speaking God’s Word and are therefore not followers of Jesus. In other words, they’re not Christians. If you count unbelievers as your friends and are close to unbelieving family members, you are not a Christian. Jesus had no friends among unbelievers and he was estranged from his family after he started his ministry. These are the facts – scriptural facts, which means they’re indisputable.
So, are you a Christian according to Jesus’ definition or a Christian according to the world’s definition? Because according to the world, a Christian is someone who is nice and quiet and tolerates, tolerates, tolerates. A doormat, essentially, a human doormat who is pliable and gullible and can be counted on to fork out for whatever charity is currently making the rounds. The world sees Christians as silly, stupid, naïve, and seriously uncool dupes who should keep their foolish beliefs to themselves but otherwise go along with whatever the world says they have to go along with. Christians are not, in the eyes of the world, strong and fearless truthtellers who will continue to be strong and fearless truthtellers no matter how much the world tries to silence them. This version of a Christian – a strong and fearless truthteller – is nearly unheard of today, even though it’s the only version that Jesus would consider worthy of him.
I hope these words have jarred you into taking a mental inventory of your friends to see if any of them are unbelievers. Be friendly with everyone – by all means, be friendly and kind – but being friendly is not the same as being friends. How can you be friends with someone who denies Jesus? You hammer a nail into Jesus’ hand when you have such a friendship. The same goes for unbelieving family members, no matter how close they may be to you in blood. Jesus said that our real family members are those who do the will of God and that if we don’t hate (that is, distance ourselves from) family members who refuse to do God’s will, we’re not worthy to be called his followers.
These are also facts, scriptural facts, and therefore indisputable.
Being a genuine follower of Jesus who speaks God’s Word fearlessly is what we should all be aiming for. You’ll know whether or not you are such a person because if you are, you’ll be banned on most social media sites, fired from your job or dropped by your clients, and shunned by your unbelieving family members and former friends. You’ll also be blacklisted in places that used to welcome you and you may even enjoy the dubious privilege of being kicked out of Christian places of worship for, well, worshiping.
If you’re an outcast and an outlaw for fearlessly speaking God’s Word – CONGRATULATIONS! There is no higher achievement in this life than to be hated by the world for being a follower of Jesus. You now stand shoulder to shoulder with Jesus in his persecution and you can expect the same and worse treatment by the world for the rest of your time on Earth.
It is a very great blessing to be persecuted solely for speaking God’s Word.
I wish this blessing on every Christian.
PERSECUTION, TORTURE AND MARTYRDOM
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 7, 2023 – I’ve been reading the Bible now for nearly 24 years, since the day I was reborn. For the first three years, I read only the New Testament; after that, I read the Old Testament as well. I’ve worn through three Bibles so far, having to retire them when the pages started falling out. I guess they don’t make Bibles like they used to.
God’s gotten on my case a few times about making the Bible an idol. He tells me it’s an instruction manual and a history of my people, not something to be held aloft and worshiped. (There are no Bibles in Heaven.) Even so, I don’t eat or drink when I’m reading the Bible, like I do when I read magazines or newspapers. I take the Bible to bed with me every night. I pack it carefully into my luggage when I travel. I kiss it on occasion, like I’d kiss God if I could.
And I read it every day. I cannot not read the Bible. It feeds me and brings me new revelations. God himself reads it to me, through his Spirit, highlighting what I need to learn.
Today, he highlighted this verse in one of Paul’s letters:
“All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”
Note that Paul wrote “all that will live godly”, not “some that will live godly”. That means all of us who genuinely follow Jesus will be persecuted, no exceptions. That was Paul’s lived experience 2000 years ago, and nothing has changed since then. Born-again believers who remain true to God and Jesus can expect to be persecuted.
So I asked God if he could flesh out a bit what Paul meant by persecution.
The Christian martyrs list.
Jesus was crucified. Stephen was stoned. John the Baptist was beheaded. Paul was beheaded. Peter was crucified upside down. James (Jesus’ brother) was stoned. And that’s just the start of the list. Millions of others since then have been martyred for no other reason than they’d repented and believed the Gospel. Living godly in Christ Jesus put them on the wrong side of the worldly powers-that-be.
The persecution, torture, and martyrdom of Jesus’ followers has been ongoing for 2000 years, but by far the worst of it was in the 20th century. In the various revolutions and regime changes, such as in Armenia, Russia, Spain, Germany, and China, somewhere between 20 million to 65 million Christians were slaughtered. This is on top of the untold numbers of believers, starting with John the Baptist, who were tortured and killed, including during the 800 years of the Inquisition that mostly targeted Bible-believing Christians. The aim in torturing these poor souls was to break them so that they’d finally agree to serve the papacy. In 2022, the same office of the Vatican that has administered the Inquisition throughout the centuries was renamed the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. In other words, the persecution, torture and martyrdom of Bible-believing Christians is unapologetically ongoing.
Jesus himself warned us about our sure prospect of persecution, including martyrdom, telling us that those who killed us would believe they were doing God’s will.
Which brings us to the likely prospect of our own martyrdom. When Paul wrote “persecution”, he meant a broad range of ill treatment, from taunting to beating to bankrupting to exiling, but he also meant martyrdom. He meant we’d likely be killed for our beliefs. We wouldn’t be killed for murder, mind you. Nor for rape. Nor for plotting against the powers-that-be – no, we’d be killed solely for what we believe, for what we read about and write about every day: God’s Truth. We’d be killed for believing and teaching God’s Word.
Are you ready to die like Jesus or Paul or Stephen or Peter, or like all the other believers who were tortured to death by agents of the worldly powers-that-be? If you’re not ready to be martyred, you’d better start getting ready, because your martyrdom could come any day, and who knows what form it will take. I hope this knowledge gives you pause. As born-again believers, we live and move in God’s Kingdom, but the Kingdom is smack dab in the middle of Satan’s realm, and Satan hates us and wants us dead and gone. As long as we’re here and witnessing the Good News, we’re a thorn in his eye and a spanner in his works, not to mention a living breathing reminder of everything he lost.
Scripture says that God’s people will suffer all manner of persecution, ending, for some, with martyrdom. If you count yourself among God’s people, you have to accept that you’ll be persecuted, which might also include being martyred.
The Bible, as God reminds me every now and then, is an instruction manual as well as a history of our people. We need to read it because we need to learn how to deal successfully with the rest of our time on Earth. Today, God taught me about persecution in the form of martyrdom. I’d read about martyrdom before, but I’d never really taken it to heart as applying to me. I guess it potentially does apply to me – it potentially applies to everyone who, as Paul puts it, lives godly in Christ Jesus. I’m not going to be scared away from being a born-again follower of Jesus, even if it does put me on the Christian martyrs list. I’ll just draw closer to God and Jesus, keep reading the Bible, and get ready for whatever comes.
GO FISH: HOW TO SURVIVE THE COMING PERSECUTION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 23, 2021 – Jesus was an itinerant preacher. He didn’t have a home synagogue or church, and he clearly wasn’t interested in building one. He moved from place to place as God guided him, going where he was needed when he was needed. He preached in the wilderness, on boats, in the town square, in synagogues, in the temple – wherever God led him. If he was in danger of getting arrested in one place, he went to another. He didn’t hang around where he wasn’t welcome. He didn’t force himself on people, and he didn’t bait law enforcement.
Setting up a permanent gathering site was never part of Jesus’ teachings.
When we read in Acts about the church in various cities like Rome and Corinth, we should be aware that the mentioned church was not an actual building; it was the believers living in those cities. The church (read “believers”) met in different locations, depending on the security risk. Again – there was no one permanent gathering site, mainly because most of the church was being persecuted and the members were constantly in hiding or on the run.
Which brings me to the point of this blog. I’ve been hearing a lot of stories lately about ‘churches’ getting shut down and fined, and pastors getting arrested for violating lockdown mandates. As much as I want to sympathize with the pastors, I just cannot. Jesus taught his followers ONLY TO GO WHERE THEY ARE WELCOME. He told them if they aren’t welcome in one town, go to the next. Fleeing persecution is part and parcel of being a follower of Jesus and preaching the Word – that is, part and parcel of being a Christian. And since it is part and parcel of being a Christian, you need to know how to avoid the main pitfalls of persecution, which today are being arrested, fined, or imprisoned. Because if you don’t avoid them, you won’t survive as a Christian.
Reports from all over the world indicate that we are again entering a time of widespread persecution. This means we have to be especially wise. If we’re threatened with arrest or fines for meeting in a particular place, we meet somewhere else. Remember that the early church lived under constant threat not only of arrest and imprisonment, but of torture and execution. These believers were always on the run and living in hiding. They gathered wherever they felt it was safe to do so, but they did it secretly. THEY DID IT SECRETLY. If they knew their gathering would get them arrested, they kept quiet about it or moved to a different location. They were wise, not foolish. They followed Jesus’ example of how to avoid arrest.
These ‘church buildings’ where pastors are being arrested should never have been designated as such. There is no reason to have a church building. Jesus never had one. The church is the people, not a building. The pastors and church members getting themselves arrested during the lockdowns are not heroes. They are not acting wisely or following Jesus’ example. They are acting the opposite of wise. Instead of defying local mandates, they need to adopt the methods of the early church and go underground. If the church members feel the need to meet to worship, they need to do it in secret, in houses or in a location other than the publicly known ‘church building’. Worshiping at a site where you’ve been threatened with arrest or fines for worshiping there is just plain pig-headed and not in any way reflective of the teachings of Jesus.
So this is my advice for those who are purposely getting arrested: READ SCRIPTURE. Get to know Jesus’ teachings on persecution and how to deal with it. Don’t be a sitting duck. If the early church had refused to go into hiding or flee from threats of arrest, Christianity may never have survived. Fleeing and secrecy are long-standing survival tools used by the church throughout the ages, and they need to be dusted off now and put into action. You’re not doing anyone any good if you’re sitting in a jail cell or selling everything you have to pay a fine.
So, to sum up:
1) The people – not a building – are the church.
2) Doing what you can to avoid potential arrest, fleeing, going into hiding, and worshiping in secret are all longstanding traditions of Jesus’ followers.
3) Being persecuted is part of what it means to be a Christian and shouldn’t be fought against. Instead, those who are experiencing persecution should flee to where the Word is welcome and where they are safe to worship and gather, even if only in secret. This is how, as Christians, we live to fight another day.
Jesus clearly demonstrated, through his teachings and by avoiding certain areas during his ministry years, that you are to stand your spiritual ground, not your physical ground. If Jesus didn’t have or didn’t encourage the building of permanent physical meeting sites, neither should we. Our permanent meeting site, as born-again believers, is God’s Holy Spirit, and he is anywhere we are.
No building required.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 