Imagine for a moment, living in a country where simply saying what the Bible says about homosexuality could send you to jail. Imagine if you will that calling homosexuality a sin is enough to get your speech censored online. Imagine what kind of country that would be. Just think about how wicked, how godless, how deserving of judgment such a nation would be. Then stop imagining and realize that the United States of America is just such a nation.
The context of this post comes from something that happened back in February which I saved at the time, but have not had the opportunity to write on as yet. Three Christian pro-life advocates have been arrested and charged with harassment at the behest of two members of the LGBTQ community. This happened in New Jersey where a group of pro-life advocates were street preaching and ministering to women outside a notoriously vile infanticide mill in the state. A nearby salon happens to be owned by a member of the LGBTQ mafia, and employs another member of the mafia. The members of the LGBTQ mafia were offended and felt targeted (ie convicted) by the preaching and called the police. Rather than explaining to the mafia members that free speech includes the right to say things you don’t like, the officer instead arrested three of the Christians. The charge against them is “shouting homophobic rhetoric” under the state’s “bias intimidation” law. If convicted, the Christians could spend a year and a half in jail. Reminder that the infanticidal murderers they were protesting will never spend a day in jail.
Obviously this is not happening everywhere in the US yet. New Jersey is a very liberal state so it is expected they will hate the truth. However, the mere fact that when I read the original article I shrugged and went “oh its New Jersey, I’m not surprised” shows us how warm the water has become without the frog noticing. We are being primed to accept full blown persecution by incidents like this one. How do you think Canada got to the point where they literally erected a chain link fence around a Christian church and established a twenty-four hour guard so that the parishioners cannot use the building to worship God? Slow gradual steps. And still some so called Christians are defending the state shutting down a church all in the name of public health.
Unfortunately, this is going to become more common. American society is rapidly becoming hostile to Christianity. Politics is downstream from the culture and culture is downstream from the church. We in the church have accepted the ideas that are going to lead to our own destruction. We’ve not taken a bold stand for Christ like we needed to. As the culture has secularized, the church secularized along with it. Rather than standing against the tide of secularism in the culture, the church drank deeply from the well of secular ideas. From light shows, and secular music styles, to sermons using “relevant” movie outlines, and youth group “gross out” games, the church looks more and more like second rate entertainment, and less and less like Christ followers.
We may have reached the tipping point in America where Christianity, in the true Biblical sense of the term, not the progressive, wishy-washy version of it, is no longer acceptable in certain areas of the country. The major cities and many of the blue states are less and less accepting of Biblical Christianity. LA is still muttering threats against John MacArthurs church. Jack Trieber’s church hasn’t met indoors in a year after accumulating such heavy fines that they could not possibly afford to continue to do so. And these are just the churches that made national news. Think about all the smaller churches that have been harassed in these places and had to deal with it, without an advocate. Now realize that any church, including yours, if they preach against any form of sexual perversion, will be in the cross hairs in the next five years or so. Start planning now for the possibility that your pastor, your elders, your deacons or you might spend time in jail for the sake of the Gospel. It happened in Canada and Canada is only a few years ahead of us on the highway to destruction.
Do you know what’s going to happen when you die? Are you completely sure? If you aren’t, please read this or listen to this. You can know where you will spend eternity. If you have questions, please feel free to contact us, we’d love to talk to you.
In His Image 