Is Persecution Coming to American Christians?

In the midst of a nation in moral and spiritual
decline, we also see the Christian
Church becoming weaker. At such a time
as this we can expect Satan to attack with
all his power in a colossal battle against
Christ’s Church. But is this a time for us to
wring our hands in fearful despair, or is it a
time to be hopefully expectant to see the
Holy Spirit once again released through the
Body of Christ as in the book of Acts?

When the church is weak,
the enemy attacks

Is it not true that a living-vital church keeps
the enemy at bay, fearful to attack? But
today in America the church is mostly
irrelevant and most news is bad news.
Recently a Roman Catholic priest was heard
to say as he reflected on the sex scandals in
his church, “It’s becoming more difficult to
walk down the street wearing a clerical
collar.” Think of the message all this leaves
on our cultural mind-set relative to
Christianity!

Every year in America there is a net loss of
2,400 Christian churches. 50% of all
churches did not even have one conversion
last year. During the last ten years the
communicant membership in all the
protestant churches was down by 9.5%
(4,498,242) and during that same ten year
span the US population grew by 11.4%
(24,153,000). No county in America has a
greater percentage of Christians than ten
years ago. Yet, during those ten years there
were conversions in the USA: 25,000 to
Islam, 547,500, to Mormonism and 500,000
to Jehovah Witnesses.

In his book, “An unSTOPPABLE Force,”
Erwin McManus states: “It’s hard to believe
that a movement born of visionaries
and dreamers would become dominantly
known for its traditions and rituals (p. 138).
A wonderful thing about being around new
believers is that they haven’t discovered the
limitations the church has embraced. Their
ability to believe in God is so pure that it
terrifies older Christians. Do you remember
when you believed God could do anything?
that God actually heard your prayers
with an intention to answer them? Do you
remember when you believed that Elijah was
an ordinary person just like you and that if
you prayed like he did, God would answer
your prayers, too?” (pp. 139-140)

Our beloved Missouri Synod is also very
vulnerable at this time. We are losing our
first love and spending too much time and
money fighting among ourselves rather than
impacting our decaying culture with the precious
Gospel of Jesus Christ.

America and Christianity today

America began as a nation that was founded
and led mostly by committed Christians.
Even though Christianity (or any other religion)
could not be made our official religion
by the government according to the
First Amendment, today we are moving from
“freedom of religion” to a nation where all
religions are “created equal.” Formerly our
Christian foundation provided an accepted,
basic, understanding of morality and freedom
for most Americans. Unfortunately,
this is no longer the case.

Demonic power is being released by the evil
agenda of “political correctness.” To speak
against homosexuality, for example, is more
and more regarded as un-American bigotry.
Our nation grows weaker economically as
our national debt increases $2,000,000,000
a year. We have lost 3.3 million jobs through
out-sourcing and by the end of this year over
one half of the “communication” jobs will
be overseas. Only 26% of marriages in
America have children amid a crumbling
sanctity of marriage. After gay marriages
what will it be? Marrying many wives (polygamy),
your sister, your dog? That’s the
way our nation is going.

Again, I quote from McManus: “The crisis
did not begin when prayer was removed from
public schools but when we stopped praying.
This event was not the starting place of our
cultural decline but the result of years of the
church’s diminishing influence on society (p.
27). America’s new grass -roots religion is
not atheism but pantheism. Today we are
not moving to a godless land but to a land
with many gods. People are rejecting Christ
because of the church! Once we were called
Christians by an unbelieving world, and now
we call ourselves Christians and the world
calls us hypocrites. Is it possible that it
wasn’t the nation that was becoming
dangerously secular but the church? We
were neither relevant nor transcendent. We
have become, in the worst of ways, religious.
We are the founders of a secular nation” (p.
29).

Signs that persecution is coming
to Christians in America

I believe that soon it will be called “un-
American” to teach that Jesus Christ is the
ONLY way to God. This “all religions are
equal” nation will not stand for any religion
saying it is the only right and true one. There
will be court cases and pressure to remove
tax-exempt status from any church that says
their belief is the only correct one. In an era
of “political correctness” there is arising in
our land an open bashing of Christians. If
Jews or Muslims or any other religion were
bashed like Christians are, there would be a
“price” to pay, but not so this ever growing
ridicule and bashing of Christianity.

Biblical ethical behavior (right and wrong),
that has been the foundation of Western society
for generations, is being superceded
by “rights” and a misinterpretation of the
First Amendment. Our liberal media pushes
violence and sex until a whole generation
really believes this is what life is all about.
Like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, they
had to destroy him because, like a mirror,
they saw themselves as they really were,
(dead) when they looked at him. So a decadent
culture will rise up and attempt to destroy
the church, when the church looks like
Jesus.

Today we are being told, “God is in everything.”
Yet it is OK to kill an unborn child
(abortion), but don’t you dare kill a mountain
lion in California. An activist judge in
Texas decreed that any child saying the word
“Jesus” anywhere in school would be arrested
and would have to spend six months
in jail. The school hired a lawyer to patrol
the halls (at a cost of $62,000) to listen for
that terrible word. At a school district in
California students were forbidden to mention
Christmas. At a school in Louisiana,
children were forced to recite Quanza verses,
and if they didn’t, their grades were reduced.
“Death” courses are being taught in some
high schools with a “suicide day” wherein
it is taught that if they commit suicide, they
will come back as a better person in their
next life.

Hollywood and the entertainment media are
in high gear portraying homosexuals as the
heroes. Recently a professor at Harvard
University stated, “How can you be so narrow
minded as to believe that there is a
God?” (Harvard began as a Christian seminary.)

Persecution: The Church’s
Finest Hour

Our risen and ruling Lord Jesus Christ will
not leave his Church with less power than
Satan and our hostile culture. In the book
of Acts the early Christians were equipped
with Holy Spirit power as they witnessed in
supernatural acts and deeds of love that Jesus
Christ was indeed Lord in their day. We
know the story well; it is clearly set forth in
the New Testament. During a time of persecution
the early church had its finest hour.
Praise the Lord!

But the “Church’s finest hour” example is
also current in our day. For years the church
in China has been under severe persecution
with often a tremendous price to pay for
being faithful to Christ. But what have been
the results? Today the church is prospering
like never before in China. People will walk
many miles to come to a house church for a
worship time that lasts many hours (Americans
can hardly “endure” one hour). Pastors
often end up in prison, but, years later,
upon their release they immediately resume
preaching and teaching about their wonderful
Lord, Jesus Christ. It seems that the
“worst of times” becomes the “best of times”
when there is a price to pay for being a Christian.
Or as someone once said, “A faith that
costs nothing, is good for nothing.”

So let us not wring our hands in despair, but
rather lift up our heads in confident expectation
and prayer that the best days are yet
to come. Could it be that all the renewal
movements these past decades were kind of
like God’s “boot camp” to prepare us for an
unprecedented outreach of the Gospel during
a fast approaching time of persecution?
We need to forget the past and press on
to our high calling in Jesus Christ (Phil
3:8-14). Past renewal movements, as great
as they were, are simply that . . . “past.” We
need to pray for the Holy Spirit to prepare
us for the next move of God that lies ahead.
It may not look like past moves, but we can
trust our gracious Lord to guide and equip
us. We need to pray regularly, “Lord, what
do you want from me today? Whom do you
want me to help, to love, today?” We need
to be in the Word of God regularly so that
this means of God’s grace can be a reservoir
in us. We are not helpless in what many
could say is a time of no hope. But just the
opposite is the case – God has everything
under control! “The present is always great
because of the presence of Christ.” The
days ahead are not the “worst of times,” but
can be filled with the power and presence
of Christ like never before.

And what’s the “race” in which we are to
“press on?” It is to get other runners in
the race by grace. Paul pressed on (looked
forward after forgetting his past) to lift up
Jesus for the world to see and be saved . . .
and our part of this world is around us everyday.
Jesus pressed on in Holy Week to
the cross so we and all men might be saved.
He could have gloried in his past, but he
rather looked forward to the cross and our
salvation. So, my friends, forget the past
and press on. Even amid persecution we
will see the hand of God move powerfully,
perhaps like never before in our lifetimes.
That is our glorious hope! Hallelujah!

D. Rossin, editor