For Christians: An Increasingly
Dangerous Worldby Brian Knowles
o the enemies of Christianity, it doesn’t matter what kind of Christian you are: you’re a target. They don’t distinguish between Sabbatarians and Sunday-keepers. They have no interest in what you believe about prophecy – or anything else for that matter. They care only that you label yourself "Christian."
The major enemies of the Christian faith continue to be communist regimes and militant Islam; but a new enemy is also making its appearance: the political Left. The Left is a Trojan horse well within our gates.
The apparent objective of the political Left is to bring about a socialist state ruled by an elite that does all of our thinking for us. This would eventually be folded into a world socialist State (pitching itself as "democratic."). For the Left, Government is God, so God can’t be God. For the Left, the Constitution is a mere "document of convenience." They will quote it when convenient; ignore it when it’s not. As it is, the Left’s judges are incrementally interpreting the Constitution out of all practical existence.
Avoiding Persecution
Generally speaking, if you want to avoid persecution, you have to avoid the sources of it. That is becoming increasingly difficult. The US State Department recently issued a list of 32 nations that severely curtail religion within their borders. Most are dictatorships. Some are Communist, others are Islamic. Even tiny Israel made the list for its laws against Christian proselytizing. Included on the list are some so-called allies: Saudi Arabia being one. France and Germany are leading the way in Europe with "anti-sect" laws, and some communist nations are following suit. Russia officially discriminates against certain religions and severe violations of religious freedom have occurred in North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Burma and the Sudan. China has long been notorious for its persecution of religious groups and movements, including Christians. Indications are that things are getting worse there, not better.
A congressional executive commission on China recently pointed out that in the two years since China was granted "normal trading relations" there has been some "slippage" in its human rights record. Since China entered the World Trade Organization, it has cracked down on religion and continued to repress ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang.
Ultimately, the responsibility for religious repression lies with national leaders and the regimes they head. The only rights any citizen of any nation has are those granted by its leadership. This is especially true in authoritarian states that are not governed by the Rule of Law but rather by the whim of the tyrant du jour, or the party in power.
Clearly, so long as God is calling people in nations that do not encourage freedom of religion, there will be persecutions, imprisonments and martyrdoms. It goes with the territory of either preaching the gospel or being called in such environments.
If the religious "good guys" enjoy freedoms, the "bad guys" are also granted the same freedoms. The only solution to this is to discriminate against the bad religions and in favor of the good ones. Yet by making such judgments, governments would become de factor involved in establishing religions – something expressly forbidden here by the US Constitution.
At the same time, in religiously free societies, malevolent religions can grow until they become a threat to all of their competitors – in fact to society itself. Religious freedom comes with a hefty price tag; but what’s the alternative?
The Left as Persecutor
Born in the fetid bowels of a morally corrupted American Academia, the doctrine of political correctness is contaminating all levels of life in the Western world. It is destroying the precision and meaning of language itself (ala George Orwell’s novel 1984). One of its more malevolent spawn is the legal invention called "hate crimes." Out of that emerged has emerged the phenomenon of "hate speech." Hate speech is being increasingly defined as condemning any given sexual behavior on religious or moral grounds. Throughout the West, laws are being passed that make it a punishable crime to speak publicly against certain behaviors. In nation after nation, freedom of Christian speech is either dead or dying.
The Canadian Precedent
The more Leftist a nation’s government is, the more likely this type of legislation is to be found. In Canada for instance, it is now illegal for broadcasters to speak negatively of homosexual behavior. But "hate speech" doesn’t apply just to sexual behavior – it applies to downing any religion other than Christianity. (It’s still open season on Christians.)
In another Canadian instance, a man who was convicted of promoting hatred against Muslims was sentenced to two years probation and 340 hours of public service – all under the direction of Mohammed Ashraf, general secretary of the Islamic Society of North America. According to Mark Harding, the "villain" in the case, Ashraf decided that rather than stuffing envelopes and licking stamps, it would be better if Harding learned about Islam. According to Harding, Ashraf said that "he was my supervisor, and if I didn’t follow what he said, he would send me back to jail." Harding has also been served with a gag order to prevent him from talking publicly about the case. Harding, 47, is a conservative Protestant who has suffered four heart attacks. Because of his ill health, he is unable to pursue his profession as a cabinetmaker. Consequently, he cannot support his family.
Harding was assigned by Ashraf to read a book entitled Towards Understanding Islam by Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi. On page 12 of that book, there is a description of a "kafir" – an infidel who does not follow Islam. A kafir is described as a person who "…will spread confusion and disorder on the earth. He will without the least compunction, shed blood, violate other men’s rights, be cruel to them, and create disorder and destruction in the world. His perverted thoughts and ambitions, his blurred vision and disturbed scale of values, and his evil-spelling activities would make life bitter for him and for all around him." Sounds a lot like a description of your average terrorist, and very much unlike your average Protestant. Yet Harding was certain that Ashraf wanted him to know that he was just such a kafir. Of course that’s not defined by Canada as "hate speech."
Sweden Spikes Gospel
Not long ago, a Christian pastor in Sweden served a four-week sentence in jail for preaching to his congregation that God is still angry at sexual perversion, and that He will judge those who practice it. Sweden has in place an "anti-hate" statute that forbids public statements against certain protected groups, including homosexuals. This means that in Sweden, where the Lutheran church has long been the state church, a preacher cannot preach the "whole counsel of God" even to his own congregation!
You might think that such travesties could not happen here. They can, and they will. It behooves all Christians to study closely the wording of any and all bills – federal, state and local – that relate to "hate speech" or "hate crimes." Consider, for example, Senate Bill S. 625 (HR 1343). The short name for this bill is the "Local Law Enforcement Act of 2001." Its stated purpose is to provide federal assistance to states and local jurisdictions to prosecute hate crimes, and for other purposes." We can only imagine what the latter are.
Study closely your local zoning laws as they relate to churches. Here again you will see a pattern in which churches are being relegated to the fringes and outskirts of towns and away from the heart of the community. The apparent aim of these zoning laws is to make the Church less available to the community, and to diminish its influence on it. See bullet points below for an additional consideration.
The Broader Agenda
Behind this attack on Christian speech is a broader agenda: to stop the preaching of the Gospel altogether, and to destroy the moral authority of the Bible and any affect it might have on the prevailing culture. With the new "feminized" translation of the Scriptures by NIV, we can see the beginnings of the first broadsides aimed against the Bible itself. Translating Scripture to accommodate the needs of specialized theologies -- feminist, black, liberation, New Age and others – means reducing the Bible to a mere humanly devised book that can be manipulated to serve any quasi-religious political agenda. It means denying the whole notion that Scripture is "God-breathed" (I Timothy 3:16).
The Christian faith is ultimately derived from Scripture, specifically the New Testament. Every attack on the Bible is an attack on the legitimacy of the Church itself. If the Bible is not inspired, then it is just another humanly devised book. If it did not flow from the will of God, then it has no divine authority. If that is the case, there’s no real basis for being a Christian. One would be better off to become a scientific humanist (as I once did).
As Satan’s wrath against the Church and against the Jewish people increases (Revelation 12:13-17), we will see more and more attacks on the Gospel, Christians, churches, and on the Bible itself. The Body of Christ is being, and will continue to be attacked at all levels. Watch for the following kinds of attack:
What Can We Do?
Does the Bible require of Christians that we be passive observers of and participants in our own destruction? Are we not permitted to exercise our rights as citizens to defend ourselves against these relentless attacks against our freedom to live as Christians? Are we allowed to defend ourselves against physical attacks?
The apostle Paul was not hesitant to exercise his legal rights as a Roman citizen to ensure his own just treatment under the law (Acts 22:25-29; 23:26-27).
Christians are not called pacifism. The right to self-defense has been an integral part of Torah from earliest times. For example, in Exodus 22:2 we read: "If a thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed."
In Jewish law, it was well understood that one had a right to prevent his own murder by striking peremptorily: "If someone comes to murder you, anticipate him and kill him first" (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 72a). This also helps explain why preemptory strikes against terrorists and rogue nations are justified.
Jesus, being familiar with Torah, took for granted that a man had the right to defend his home against a robber (Matthew 24:43).
The point is Christians have the right to self-defense under any and all circumstances both under the law of God, and under civil law. As citizens of the United States – or whatever nation – we may exercise, as did Paul, the rights granted by that nation’s constitution. We are not called to be doormats. We have every right to participate in the political process and to actively fight against anti-Christian legislation.
With all this in mind, here is a list of things we can do to prevent, or reverse, anti-Christian legislation in our nations:
If we as Christians passively allow our rights to be eroded piecemeal, we will end up without any rights. We will then be lambs to the slaughter. Moral decay is taking place all around us. A minority of malevolent Leftists has found its way into power. Such people occupy almost all major positions of influence in the media, movies, the NY publishing establishment, Academia, and in newspaper publishing. A Leftist Senate and Judiciary are actively chipping away at the very foundations upon which this great nation was built.
There is in the book of Isaiah a powerful lesson for today’s America. At a time when Judah and Jerusalem were sinking into deep moral decay, the fiery prophet spoke these words: "For Jerusalem stumbled, and Judah is fallen, because their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of His glory. The look on their countenances witnesses against them, and they declare their sin as Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to their soul! For they have brought evil upon themselves…O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the way of your paths" (Isaiah 3:8-9, 12b).
Later in his prophecy Isaiah thundered, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil; who put darkness for light and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter" (Isaiah 5:20).
This is exactly what is happening in today’s America – once "One Nation Under God." God’s standards are being overthrown and replaced by perverse standards. What has always been understood as good is now being defined as evil. And what is plainly evil is being exalted as good. Those who speak out against sin and evil are being imprisoned. Those who commit it are being celebrated. Something is clearly wrong with this picture. In His Word, God speaks of "thrones of iniquity" – that is, governments that pass legislation that facilitates evil and opposes good. For example Psalm 94:20 – 21a: "Shall the throne of iniquity, which devises evil by law, have fellowship with you? They gather together against the life of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood…" These days, we are seeing much evil devised by legislation. We are seeing the innocent prosecuted and persecuted -- and the guilty celebrated.
For Christians of all varieties, it’s crunch time. We can lie passively back and allow ourselves to be persecuted into oblivion, or we can assert ourselves and fight for the right to practice our faith without interference from anyone. This is not the time to adopt a position of prophetic fatalism. What happens around us, and to us, is the result of cause & effect factors. Change the cause and you change the effects. Remember Nineveh (in the book of Jonah)? If we have to go down, wouldn’t it be better to go down fighting than simply to succumb to the forces of evil?
President Theodore Roosevelt, who died in 1919, said, "I believe that the next half century will determine if we will advance the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the horrors of brutal paganism." Fifty years from his death would have been 1969. Consider how much of the present corruption was born in the 60’s. Roosevelt’s words seem prescient indeed as we witness the incremental decay of Western Civilization.
More recently, President Ronald Reagan said, "If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a Nation gone under."
We are going under. We may be "the world’s only superpower" but we’re rotting from within with moral and ethical turpitude. The Church – such as it is – stands shakily in the gap. Will it be up to task of fighting back the dark forces that seek its destruction, and that of Western Civilization in general? Will the followers of Jesus Christ learn to focus on what unifies them, rather than on what divides them? Will they learn that "a house divided cannot stand"?
I believe that each one of us must learn what it means to be a "generic" Christian and view that as the common denominator within the believing community. We can work toward doctrinal understanding. We can inch our way toward unity. But we must come to realize that there is only one real Body of Christ. It is the Holy Spirit that makes us one, not doctrinal, organizational, or political consensus (I Corinthians 12:13). As I wrote at the beginning, the enemies of the Church are not concerned with our internal, esoteric differences. They simply see us as Christians. The militant Moslems view us as "Crusaders." The Chinese Communists see in us a threat to their precious national stability. The Left is offended by our sexual morality and by our willingness to place allegiance to God ahead of allegiance to Government (Acts 5:29). In their intellectual snobbery and what Tom Sowell calls the arrogance of the "anointed," they view themselves as the only fit elite to rule the earth. Jesus taught us that it is the meek – those who humble themselves before God – who will ultimately inherit the earth.
The Lot of Christians
Meekness is not weakness. It simply means yielding to the authority of God in one’s life. It means obedience and a willingness to serve the purposes of the Kingdom no matter the cost. As representatives of the Kingdom of God, we are collectively the "light of the world" as was Jesus when he walked this earth. We are called "Ambassadors for Christ." This means that we represent Him and his way on planet Earth. We have citizenship in Heaven (Philippians 3:20). Yet we are also citizens of the nations in which we live. Like Paul, we may exercise dual citizenship. The demands of the Kingdom take precedent over the demands of worldly governments (Acts 5:29 etc.). That of course often sets up a conflict of interests.
Representing Christ comes with a price tag. The battle scarred apostle Paul, writing to his protégé Timothy, said, "But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience, persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me.
"Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution" (II Timothy 3:10-12).
Paul went through the mill backwards and forwards for the Gospel. You can read a short list of his sufferings in II Corinthians 11:16-33.
Paul, like all of the apostles, was eventually martyred, probably during the reign of Nero, one of Rome’s worst monsters. He paid the ultimate price for the privilege of preaching the Gospel. Down through the centuries, Paul and the others have been joined by numerous of martyrs for Christ. In the last century alone it is estimated that more than 100,000 were slaughtered for their professed faith in Christ. This century’s martyrdoms could well eclipse that if the first two years is any indication.
Paul accepted the possibility that he could be murdered for the sake of his work. He wrote to the Corinthians: "For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s" (Romans 14:8).
When a person becomes a true, committed Christian, he or she burns all bridges. The world and its desires cease to be important. God and Jesus the Messiah become the center of our lives. Paul said matter-of-factly, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21).
The aged apostle John instructed his disciples toward the end of his life, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever" (I John 2:15-17).
There are those in the world who believe that by murdering Christians and Jews they will receive a reward in Paradise. They have been misled. John knew the truth. He said, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him" (I John 3:15).
It is likely that before the curtain comes down on the age of man, thousands, perhaps millions, of Christians will be imprisoned, tortured, enslaved and finally murdered by those who hate Christ. The spirit of Anti-Christ is already well established in the modern world. The apostle John, describing visions given him directly by our Lord, wrote of a "woman" called "Babylon the Great" who would become "drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus…" (Revelation 17:6).
Just how this Satanic system will emerge in the final days is anyone’s guess. We know with certainty that it will appear. When it does, many Christians will die, though some will escape. Summing up his end time prophecy, Jesus warned, "Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be counted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man" (Luke 21:36).
©Association for Christian Development
Used with permission.
