I was out driving around this afternoon and as most people do, I turned on the radio to pass the idle time inside the car. I don’t remember which Christian station I was listening to, not that it really matters much, it’s the content that mattered enough to nearly bring me to tears.
I sat and listened as a Chinese woman talked about the persecution of the Church in China. Since I don’t speak Chinese, I admit there’s always a possibility someone could be reading the alphabet with emotion and the translator could be imagining a grandiose story, but I doubt this to be the case. This woman talked about how she was in a home church, worshipping the Lord, when the house was raided by the secret police. There were one hundred people in the church and eighty were caught. She detailed how she ran as fast as she could for ten miles; she said she had been arrested previously for worshipping, and a second offense would land her in prison for three years.
As I sat and listened to this woman’s heart wrenching story, I was reminded about how the American church hasn’t got the right to complain and carry on when things like the Ten Commandments get thrown out of federal courthouses or the Terri Schiavo case didn’t go our way. Immediately I thought about an article that talked about how we’re heading for a “China level persecution” in this country. No we’re not, and it’s shameful for American Christians to remotely compare themselves to real persecution going on in the Body of Christ. How dare we sanctimoniously compare civilized courtroom debate to beatings and the use of electric wands?
Until you know what it’s like to be tortured for your faith in the Lord Jesus, then stop claiming you’re being persecuted or discriminated against; what we’re going through in the American Church isn’t persecution and never has been. “The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ” (Luke 12:53) All that is happening is the division the Lord told us would come when we take up the cross and follow Him.
If you were to attend a lecture given by a member who had actually been tortured, could you look yourself in the mirror and still believe the rhetoric modern day leaders keep trying to tell us exists in this country? If you actually believe the American church is under persecution, I challenge you to show me a pile of bloody stones in this country. Accept a political loss to be just that – political.
If you want the slightest taste in persecution, go outside armed with a ton of Gospel tracts and go preach the Word of God before it’s too late. If you really love the Lord, you’d know He commands you to seek and save the lost. “Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.’” (Matthew 9:37) Experience what it feels like to be turned down or made fun of, then remember “Blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for My sake.” (Matthew 5:11)
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