How Much Persecution Do Christians Bring Upon Themselves?
Every misconception of God has a consequence
Well, the title of this article is much like a leading question in the legal world, as it suggests the answer and says it all. In this country, many Christians have earned their persecution. How? As Dr. Voddie Bauchum once preached, “Too many Christians have a sissified image of Jesus.” I can assure you, if you have any knowledge of Jesus, the Jesus to come is not the Jesus that was. In His next coming, He will not sit down and speak in soft tones to you at the corner Starbucks over a cup of Joe. At that moment, you will want to pull the mountains in on top of you. The days of Christians supporting evil in what they tolerate will come to an end.
The chaos we suffer in America today is a result of our collective detachment from reality, better known as psychosis. Unfortunately, many Christians have contributed to the chaos in this country as a result of their misunderstanding of the scriptures we are to study, know and understand. This has led to a naive and inappropriate application of scripture by many Christians in their response to the evil that is engulfing our country and the world today. It has resulted in an ungodly and toxic tolerance of evil. Tolerating evil is evil.
Why is this happening? We have too many wolves in pastors’ clothing and, if not that, then sheep in pastors’ clothing. Most pastors can tell you what evil looked like 2,000 years ago but can’t or won’t tell you about the evil we face today, much less give it a name. This is borne of either ignorance or cowardice. This paralyzes many congregations from making clear, correct and decisive choices. In a political sense, it is resulting in the churches turning out socialists and undermining the religious freedoms we have enjoyed for over 200 years.
For example, some Christians find themselves voting for Democrats whose platform has embraced every evil of Romans 1. Then there are other Christians who, with a sanctimonious attitude and false piety, decide that they are too good to vote and thus abstain. That is not righteousness. It is stupidity, which always has embedded within it a degree of immorality.
So, why are churches not giving direction to their congregations regarding what is clearly evil in today’s world? Well, as Dr. R. C. Sproul once said, it’s because they are too busy looking over their shoulder for the approval of man. I contend there is too much faithless attention to keeping their church membership up and their 401Ks. If only we could clone the likes of D. James Kennedy, John MacArthur and others who are the templates of how pastors should confront the culture and do so in clear, courageous and unambiguous terms.
When MacArthur and Kennedy preached, they practiced fidelity to the Word and were courageous, fearing God more than man. They delineated what and who was evil in our contemporary world. How great would it be to be so beholden to the truth that your first concern was not yourself but about the bold profession of the truth and an unrelenting confrontation of evil?
Many Christian leaders and laypeople alike are so compromised that they find themselves in service to the lord of this world. They undermine the very thing upon which they depend and hope to save in this life and the next.
In this season of an existential presidential election, many in the Christian community are plagued with false piety and sanctimonious attitudes, saying they will not vote. They justify their not voting in a binary election where one choice is clearly and historically evil, and the other, while less than perfect, does preserve constitutional freedoms, particularly the freedom of religion. Many professing Christians sacrifice the good for the nonexistent perfect.
With all the books that could be written on this topic of metaphorical Christian suicide, let’s leave the topic with this one example, and I will name names. If the Democrat Jezebel, Kamala Harris, and her socialist running mate Tim Walz win the presidency in November, this nation will have unrestricted abortion (baby mutilation) up to and after birth. But it doesn’t end there. Freedom of speech will be lost. Recently, it came under attack by Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. The right to bear arms will end as well, and as Elon Musk so correctly pointed out, if you don’t have your second amendment, you will not keep your first amendment, which is the freedom of speech, and without which you will cease to be a free people.
Furthermore, plans are in the works that will move to restrict the church through a new cause of action on the basis of religious trauma. I address that in America’s Systemic Psychosis. All of this is monstrous, and for any Christian to sit on the sidelines to let others fight the fight is evil. Many Christians will have that blood on their hands. There is no excuse for the naivety many Christians exhibit.
So, what is the bottom line? Christians must stop playing into the hands of the devil. They are bringing about their own persecution. There is no choice for Christians in this November’s election, and not voting is not one of them. The Democrat Party has been subsumed by evil, evidenced by their platform. As Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has said, you cannot honor God by voting Democrat. No, this is not a partisan statement. It is a sad fact, and it is a Christian’s responsibility to exercise wisdom and good judgment in how they direct their vote, and it is clearly not to support evil.
This November is a pivotal point in our nation’s history. We will either continue to live as a free people or will quickly devolve into an authoritarian nightmare, and Christians are high on the list for persecution.
Jack L. Richardson, IV