Greetings,
There are a great number of people that do not know the Lord and openly admit that they have no real interest in following the teaching of the Bible. There are also a number of people that claim that they follow the teachings of the Bible but obviously do not. This world is overwhelmingly biblically illiterate and becoming increasingly hostile toward those who believe in Christ.
This last week some people raised a fuss about the Vice President’s wife teaching art at a Christian school. People came out against her and Christians in general for not adopting principles of an unbiblical and ungodly worldview. The world is trending downward morally speaking while seeing a rise in worldly “sophistication.” This divide between biblical morality and worldly sophistication is a recipe for the makings of persecution.
The first signs of persecution will be labeling and misrepresenting the biblical position. There will be a gross generalization of what we believe and a broad acceptance that all Christians are bigots and latest-group-a-phobic.
Misrepresentation will lead to broad stroke vilification of Christ followers. There will be little that a believer will be able to say to sway public opinion because the collective mentality and hyper sensitivity to being on the “right side of history” (from the world's viewpoint) will overpower reason, logic and intellectual dialogue. This is where a person who claims to be a follower of Christ but is entangled with the world's precepts will vilify the church themselves and either leave the church, split the church or start their own church.
Look around at churches today and you will see the effects of the third phase of this progression of persecution. I believe this is where we are today in the northwest USA. Once the church is misrepresented and vilified they are marginalized or seen as not important. We made it past the Christmas and Easter Christian to the unchurched generation that has no reference point for why the church is any more valuable than fraternal organizations. People in the unchurched generation don’t find value in church. This generation is largely missing from most congregations, and even those that do attend church in this generation often are asking "what can the church do for me?", not "what can I do in the name of Christ?"
The first signs of persecution will be labeling and misrepresenting the biblical position. There will be a gross generalization of what we believe and a broad acceptance that all Christians are bigots and latest-group-a-phobic.
Misrepresentation will lead to broad stroke vilification of Christ followers. There will be little that a believer will be able to say to sway public opinion because the collective mentality and hyper sensitivity to being on the “right side of history” (from the world's viewpoint) will overpower reason, logic and intellectual dialogue. This is where a person who claims to be a follower of Christ but is entangled with the world's precepts will vilify the church themselves and either leave the church, split the church or start their own church.
Look around at churches today and you will see the effects of the third phase of this progression of persecution. I believe this is where we are today in the northwest USA. Once the church is misrepresented and vilified they are marginalized or seen as not important. We made it past the Christmas and Easter Christian to the unchurched generation that has no reference point for why the church is any more valuable than fraternal organizations. People in the unchurched generation don’t find value in church. This generation is largely missing from most congregations, and even those that do attend church in this generation often are asking "what can the church do for me?", not "what can I do in the name of Christ?"
Once the unchurched generation comes of age to lead in this country in overwhelming numbers, the logical next stage would be to criminalize the work of the church. Any deep discussion on this stage would be largely filled with conjecture as we do not know how exactly that will look. We need to be alert and not be caught off guard when this becomes a reality, and we must teach our children to be ready for this as well.
The obvious final stage will be outright persecution and punishment. It is really hard to imagine these final two stages because of our constitution here in the USA. As believers, our faith is not in our constitution, but in Christ and the constitution is not the word of God and so can therefore be circumvented. All of this is to say that we should be wise in our observance of the world around us. At some point our love for people may be taken as a hate crime.
No matter the situation, we should never keep from operating as the bride of Christ and fully obedient followers of Christ. It is clearer than ever that we should be loving each other all the more as the days are approaching.
Matthew 10:16, "Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves."
Love ya,
Chris
