Standing Firm in Your Faith預覽

 The Coming Storm

Scripture and redemptive history picture a great dilemma: The more God interacts with the people of the earth, the more they rebel and rage against Him. Our God loves the people He has made, but since the Fall in the Garden of Eden, His interactions with His creations have been influenced by what the apostle Paul called “the mystery of iniquity” (2 Thessalonians 2:7 kjv), fallen humanity’s hidden rage against its Maker. It is neither logical nor rational that people should hate and reject such a merciful God. Yet for millennia, men and women have carried deep contempt toward God’s sovereignty and even His very existence.

Over time, individual rage becomes the collective, unified rage of entire nations. In the days to come, the Church will be despised across the globe because the name of Jesus will be so despised, and persecution will result.

In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus announced, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. . . . Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake” (Matthew 5:10–11). The eight Beatitudes culminate with the one about being persecuted, almost as if being persecuted for righteousness’ sake proves that you are living out the truth of the first seven.

Nations will not fully hate the Church until they see the true status and dominant ascendency of the Church and are threatened by its message. This, of course, is not the present state of affairs. We could call the current relationship between the nations of the earth and the worldwide Church simply indifferent. But in the days to come, the nations will align themselves against the Church, once they have come to understand its threat to their hard-won power. 

While the Gospel of God’s forgiveness and mercy regarding our sins is a message preached to individuals, the “Gospel of the Kingdom” is a political message regarding the returning, rightful King of Israel and His intention to conquer and rule all the nations of the earth. This message applies to nations, cultures, economies and every ethnic and language group on earth. The scope of this message is unprecedented in the history of missions. Accordingly, the subsequent impact and resulting global persecution will be far beyond anything we have seen before in Church history.