PERSECUTION AND SUFFERING OF GOD'S PEOPLE
―Undoubtedly anti-Semitism is on the rise again worldwide.
There are many Christians who havegone through difficult years......
What is certain is that even terrible, despairing situations are to be used by God to deepen His relationship with His followers so that they will be victoriously and gloriously enrolled in His kingdom―
There are many Christians who havegone through difficult years......
What is certain is that even terrible, despairing situations are to be used by God to deepen His relationship with His followers so that they will be victoriously and gloriously enrolled in His kingdom―
Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. 9 Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. 10 For, ‘Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. 11 They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. 12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.’ 13 Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? 14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. ‘Do not fear their threat]; do not be frightened.’ 15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behaviour in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. 17 For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.
1PETER 3:8-17.
This month we would like to focus on two events which mark the end of times shortly before the Lord’s Second Coming; the worldwide persecution of the Jews and suffering of Christians as Peter predicted: ‘For it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And,
“If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?” So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good’ (1Pe.4:17-19).
On 22nd February this year, news with the headline that reads “Anne Frank's Diary vandalised in Japan libraries” was reported. It was found that pages have been ripped out from at least 265 copies of Anne Frank's Diary and other related books stocked in several public libraries in Japan’s capital, Tokyo. It is still not clear who was behind the vandalism and what their motives were. Anne Frank's diary was written during World War Two by a Jewish teenager, Anne as she and her family hid from the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam. In Japan, the book has been taken as a symbol of the suffering of Jews during the war and it had given many Japanese people the knowledge of the Jewish holocaust. However, there has been no history of Jewish settlement and no history of anti-Semitism in Japan up to now and so, this unexpected vandalism remains a mystery. Wiesenthal Center (one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 members in the US) has expressed shock and deep concern over this mass desecration of the Diary of Anne Frank in at least two dozen libraries in Tokyo.
The shocking development was first reported in The Huffington Post: "The geographic scope of these incidents strongly suggest an organized effort to denigrate the memory of the most famous of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis in the World War II Holocaust," charged Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human Rights organization which also houses a major exhibition on Anne Frank at its Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. "I know from my many visits to Japan, how much Anne Frank is studied and revered by millions of Japanese. Only people imbued with bigotry and hatred would seek to destroy Anne's historic words of courage, hope and love in the face of impending doom," Cooper added. "We are calling on Japanese authorities to step up efforts to identify and deal with the perpetrators of this hate campaign," Cooper concluded. (http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nlnet/content.aspx?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=8776547&ct=13663333¬oc=1)
Undoubtedly anti-Semitism is on the rise again worldwide and the following is an excerpt from Dave Hunt’s book: “Judgment Day! Israel, Islam, and the Nations”.
Anti-Semitism did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany and the death of Hitler. In fulfillment of biblical prophecies, not only in Muslim countries but worldwide, it is again on the rise, causing a heightened level of alert in Jewish communities. A brief search of the internet reveals scores of examples. There is an alarming increase in the widespread desecration of Jewish cemeteries. Violence against Jews and Jewish property is rising……
According to the Bible, there are two reasons for this universal hatred of Jews and Israel. First of all, the Jews, as God’s chosen people, are under His judgment for their rebellion against Him and the rejection of their Messiah. Secondly, anti-Semitism is inspired of Satan—a being whose existence many “educated” people deny. The reason is obvious. It was foretold that the Savior of the world, who would rescue mankind from Satan’s control, would be a Jew. Satan’s only hope to escape eternal doom, therefore, was to destroy those whom God chose “to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.” Had Satan been able to destroy the Jews before the birth of the Messiah, he would have prevented his own defeat. For promising a Messiah who never came, God would have proved Himself a liar.....
The Bible declares that the Messiah came and defeated Satan by “tast[ing] death for every man” and bearing “our sins in his own body on the tree.” But that fact did not end the battle between God and His arch-enemy for the hearts, minds, and eternal destiny of mankind. That battle continues to rage—and Israel is at its center. The Bible contains hundreds of prophecies that, although God would severely punish Israel for her sins, He would preserve a remnant and bring the scattered Jews back into their own land. This prophecy, too, is undeniably in the process of being fulfilled in our day.
Satan could still escape his eternal doom if he could wipe out Israel. That fact provides the only rational explanation for Muslims’ irrational obsession with destroying that tiny nation. It also stands as evidence that Satan is a reality, not a myth……
Balaam is one of the most enigmatic figures in the Bible. He was at one time in touch with God and made some genuine prophecies as recorded in Scripture, yet he later turned away from God and is in hell now. For example, he foretold the star in the East that the wise men saw and followed to find Christ at His birth. One of Balaam’s prophecies recorded in the Bible that has been and is still being fulfilled in our day is most unusual. He declared that Israel would “not be reckoned among the nations.”
This remarkable utterance does not stand alone. God has stated it many times and in other ways. For example, “The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth”; “I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people......I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.” Except for the holiness it was to manifest, this is precisely the situation in which Israel finds herself today. Israel has been a member of the United Nations for more than fifty years. Yet she is not allowed to take her two-year turn as one of the ten rotating nations (joining the five permanent ones) on the UN Security Council. Of the 191 current UN members, 190…… are allowed to take their turns on the Security Council—but not Israel.
Nor is Israel, as already noted, allowed to take a rotating term on the fifty-three-member UN Commission on Human Rights (UNHRC). All of the other one hundred ninety UN member nations are allowed to do so. These have included Libya, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and other egregious violators of human rights. Incredibly, Sudan, where more than two million blacks in the south have been slaughtered by Muslims, has been voted in for a third consecutive term. But Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is excluded, as the Bible foretold……
There are scores of promises that God would in the end restore Israel fully to her land. Yet Christian leaders deny these promises by saying that Israel is finished: “…physical Jews…are in slavery and will not be heirs of God’s promise because they are not the children of promise [author’s emphasis].” Another author writes, “The idea that corporate national Israel is still God’s chosen people is prevalent in the minds of many today. But…the Word of God shows that…Israel broke the Old Covenant and thereby forfeited any rights to it.” This claim, if true, would clearly make God a liar. We will deal with this more fully in Chapter Eleven, proving that it is false.
World Vision is the largest and one of the oldest (founded in 1950) independent “evangelical” charitable organizations in the world, with annual income exceeding $1.2 billion. It claims to use its resources for “emergency relief, education, health care, economic development and promotion of justice.” Of the millions of dollars it allocates to the Middle East, nothing goes to Israelis—everything goes to “Palestinians.” All of the wars Arabs have started from 1948 to the present and all of the Muslim terrorism is blamed upon Israel. World Vision calls security measures that Israel takes to protect its citizens from Muslim attacks “collective punishment” against Palestinians. Terrorists are the “victims,” not those they murder in cold blood.
The anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian bias exhibited by Christian organizations is staggering not only in its wickedness but also in the misinformation it persuades supporters to believe. Christian Aid Mission promotes some of the worst anti-Israel propaganda: the Holocaust killed 600,000, not 6 million; it is not the Arabs who are terrorists, but the Jews; “Ashkenazi Zionists” are not Jews but Khazars, who, “through acts of terrorism...have killed, driven out or displaced over 2 million of the original residents of Palestine.” The fact that such claims are false will be fully documented herein.
Why did God choose Israel? He had to choose a people through whom the Messiah would come into the world as a man to pay the penalty for our sins. Abraham, like Noah, “found grace” in God’s eyes. He is called “the Friend of God.” Abraham was promised a land as an “everlasting possession” for his heirs. The present conflict in the Middle East is a dispute over who those heirs are today.
The passage quoted at the beginning remarkably fits our own time, which teaches us how believers should live in a hostile anti-Semitic and anti-Christian world. Peter lists five virtues of true believers; harmony, sympathy, brotherly love, tender heart and humbleness. There is no room for revenge here, instead, we are to seek peace and blessing against insult and evil as Paul taught:
‘When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world – right up to this moment’ (1Co.4:12-13).
Christ also taught:
‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (Mt.5:44).
In verses 10-12, when he quoted from Psalm 34:12-16, Peter, knowingly omitted the last part of verse16: ‘to blot out their name from the earth’. We are to persevere until God’s time as it is written,
‘for the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of retribution, to uphold Zion’s cause’ (Is.34:8).
On the other hand, it is also true that until that day, however the evil enemies seek and try to injure believers, there will be no evil befalling the righteous because it is God’s Word, i.e., His promise to His true followers:
‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose…… If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies…… Christ Jesus who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Ro.8:28-39).
The suffering of believers includes persecution, sickness, natural- and human- disasters, and financial difficulty and so on, and yet, God uses all of these to chasten and restore believers so as to sanctify them for their good. For believers the best witness against all wrongs, slander and contempt by our enemies is to be innocent and faithful to the Lord to death whatever happens to them.
Actually, there are many Christians who have gone through difficult years. Among our fellow sufferers there are those who have encountered the death of loved ones and family members by illness, disasters and also those who have faced other various problems as if their prayer has not been answered at all. There are deep sorrows similar to those experienced by Martha and Mary when their brother Lazarus died before the Lord arrived, and they desperately cried
‘Lord…if you had been here, my brother would not have died’. At the same time they showed their faith in Christ as well: ‘But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask’ (Jn.11:21-22).
In the end of this account, Christ Himself wept with a loud expression of grief, and caused an amazing miracle in which Lazarus was raised from the dead even four days after death. Here, lots of questions might arise: Why such tragedies happen to good people, what God’s promise of protection upon His people means, why a loving God allows horrible accidents and illnesses upon His children, why God’s answer to our prayer seems to be delayed and so on.
However, the answers can be found in Scripture, which are full of accounts of delayed timing and prolonged perseverance as if believers needed to experience utter despair before victory and then are able to rejoice in the ultimate divine intervention. The Scripture clearly testifies; no matter what the circumstance, God is always with those who trust in and believe in His Word through all things. What is certain is that even terrible, despairing situations are to be used by God to deepen His relationship with His followers so that they will be victoriously and gloriously enrolled in His kingdom.
NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS
This month, a money gift of￡**** has been sent to Mary Jane in the Philippines to support her ministry of reaching out to minority tribes and to the impoverished children with the Word, and also to support a joint outreach with a Japanese youth missionary FFN team to her flocks and tribal children and their parents. The team and Pastor Koichi Hirano will work together with Mary Jane from 25th Feb. to 2nd March. Pray for fruits-bearing of their activities in several tribal areas centred in her base Bulacan.