Encouragement

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After being home for a few weeks ministering in supporting churches and visiting friends I returned to Mexico with a heart filled with gratitude to God for His abundant goodness and a foreboding sense of concern for where we are headed. After watching the news it seems to be “chick” to be a Christian basher! What, you can’t even say Merry Christmas without fear of being sued! Come on, give me a break!!! And what is this about some guy that wants to strike the words “In God we Trust” and eliminate the prayer and the bible from our president’s inauguration? Salvation Army workers can’t stand in front of Target stores? Monuments of bibles are removed from public sight? Somebody correct me, because I thought I was in America!

These pitifully shallow slams are almost not worth dignifying with a reaction. They go way beyond the border of the absurd all the way to pure stupidity! Yet, I believe they are the beginning of a trend that will increase and eventually come to the point when “those who kill you will think they are doing God a service.” Their roots are as old as the cross spreading with hatred and persecution all the way to the twenty first century.

The church triumphant has borne the scorn of despots and tyrants throughout the ages. The wrath of the first century “Christian bashers” was far more sever than a ranting divorced father who uses his daughter to gain national notoriety while suing to remove prayer from the presidential inauguration.

In 112A.D Pliny, the proconsul of Bithynia wrote to the emperor Trajan of Rome describing his attempt to rid the territory of Christians. He called these strange people a “Contagion of a superstition.” But his name-calling did not sway these heroic saints. They would not be insulted into submission. He then resorted to interrogations followed by torture and death if they did not renounce Jesus and offer incense to images of the emperor. Failure to renounce Christ meant being clothed with animal skins and given to the dogs or to be dressed in a shirt of pitch and be burned alive or to be thrown to the panthers and leopards to be played with and then eaten. On one occasion he tortured two deaconesses and stated, “I found nothing but an absurd and extravagant superstition.” My, my! I fear Pliny was rudely awakened to the truth upon his last breath. Today he sits in hell wishing that he had been contaminated with that contagion.

At the time of these cruel persecutions a phrase was birthed among the populace It was called “the third race.” Invented by heathen and welcomed by Christians this phrase was shouted in the circus of Carthage as the saints were given to wild animals to be torn in half and eaten alive. Rising from the throngs of blood thirsty heathen was the cry Usque quo genus tertium? How long must we endure this third race? In the roman’s’ mind there was the first race which was the Romans and the Gentile, then there was the second race, the Jews and finally the third race, the Christian. Now that strikes me like a hammer hitting an anvil.

Here was a people who posed no military threat yet were hated with a vengeance. They served in the military, were honest in their business transactions and maintained moral purity in their homes. They were so distinct from the rest that they were called a third race! This precious people, this royal priesthood, this holy nation was different!

I wonder if our neighbors our family and our business associates see us as the third race? Do our lives mark the distinction that attracts persecution from the hands of the ungodly and then rejoice in it for the glory of God?

Persecution has permanently enriched the history of the church and it shall be no different for us. It has given us the noble heritage of the testimony and the suffering of those whose lives would otherwise have been unrecorded. Their very names as well as their careers would have been unknown had not persecution "dragged them into fame and chased them up to heaven."

So I say to those who shout Usque quo genus tertium, BRING IT ON! Chase me to fame and to heaven!

Now, somebody want to sue me?

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