GREATEST THREAT EVER RAISED AGAINST THR BODY OF CHRIST
There are many articles about evangelicals turning away from Israel to support the creation of a Palestinian state... However, God has issued a promise and a land deed to Abraham and his descendants
in perpetuity:
'Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are northward, southward, eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever'" (Gen. 13:14-15)
‘If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: “A servant is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin…
‘All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you, but now I am going to him who sent me. None of you asks me, “Where are you going?” Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things. But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.
JOHN 15: 18- 22. 16:1-11.
As we close out the year 2014, I would like to discuss the issue of the ‘church’ this month, the united body of Christ in a bond of love. As we all know, great diversity exists within the Christendom. While there are many Christians who support the Jewish people and the state of Israel, there also exist Christian anti-Semites. There are recent reports of another growing phenomenon of Christians allying with Islamic terror organizations. Although many may be ignorant of this fact, the reality is that a growing number of Western Christians have started to collaborate with the Muslim fight against Israel, by primarily supporting anti-Israel Palestinian Protestant organizations like Sabeel and Kairos. According to the article by Tsvi Sadan on 7th Dec. of “Israel Today”: ‘Christians Affection for Islamic Terrorism’, after the Gaza war in the summer, the Christian support for Hamas has grown, and non-denominational movements like Tony Compolo’s Red-Letter Christians continue to be one of those trying to help Hamas to free Gaza.
Sadan puts it: ‘…some of the speakers from the Middle East, like the patriarchs of the Syriac and Maronite Churches, were expressing support for Hezbollah. While these two patriarchs can be excused for befriending terrorists for the sake of their communities, one must wonder about the motivation of some PCUSA members in cozying up to the Lebanese terrorist militia. …And films like With God on Our Side by Porter Speakman, Jr, formerly of Youth With a Mission, and Little Town of Bethlehem, produced by Oral Roberts University chairman Mart Green, are much more than run-of-the-mill anti-Israeli propaganda. By romanticizing Muslim expressions of hate for Israel, such films have effectively become recruitment tools’ (PCUSA: Presbyterian Church USA).
There are many other articles about evangelicals turning away from Israel to support the creation of a Palestinian state. The following excerpt from ‘ISRAEL: MORE FRIENDS THAN FOES’ (Christian Press.com) points out such an anti-Israel campaign, which repudiates biblical doctrine and defames bible-abiding Christians.
Devotees of "Christ at the Checkpoint," a group of evangelicals dedicated to reclaiming the "prophetic role in bringing peace, justice and reconciliation in Palestine and Israel," are clearly pro-Palestinian. They embrace Replacement Theology, the belief that God is finished with Israel as a nation and has installed the church as the true "Israel of God." This position negates God's promises, etched in Scripture, of (1) Israel's future restoration; (2) a Messianic Kingdom on Earth; and (3) glory for Jacob and his posterity, including full land rights to the inheritance in the Middle East.Undoubtedly, the Jewish return to Israel is theologically unsettling to Replacement practitioners. And gentlemanly disagreement has turned into a united front among Replacement adherents to discredit the opposition. This spring's reconciliation between Hamas leaders in Gaza and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is a terrorist union based on absurdity. Purportedly, the agreement includes working toward a two-state solution that recognizes Israel's existence.Yet, Hamas has fired thousands of missiles into Jewish towns in an attempt to kill as many Israeli men, women and children as possible. Hamas's very charter enshrines its commitment to eradicate Israel. Additionally, Abbas oversees an unremitting incitement campaign against Israel, praising suicide attackers who have drenched Israeli streets with innocent blood.Professing believers in Christ who align themselves with anti-Semites defame Bible-believing Christians and demonize Israelis.In a culture obsessed with radical change, fighting for the underdog is fashionable. But we must ensure the underdog is truly an underdog and not the fabrication of propaganda…God has issued a promise and a land deed to Abraham and his descendants in perpetuity: "And the Lord said to Abram ... 'Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are-northward, southward, eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever'" (Gen. 13:14-15)…Israel still has more friends than foes. Although opposition exists, we must not become agitated by stories of massive evangelical defections from loyalty to Israel. It is a concern, but the movement is a noisy, activist sliver among evangelical Christians. The mature remnant of believers stands firm with Israel's right to the land. These Christians have wisely chosen truth over fabrications. That will not change.
In the passage quoted at the beginning, the Lord, having commanded His disciples, i.e., intimate believers alone, to love one another, He began to predict what would soon happen to them after His arrest and crucifixion. It was a solemn warning of anticipating opposition. While He was with them, as Christ mentioned in Jn.16:4, there was no evidence of persecution against them. However, a time will come when opposition would vindicate the authenticity of the discipleship, which Christ’s brother James taught:
‘You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God’ (Ja.4:4).
Christ’s warning to His true disciples was a call for complete separation out of the world. In His days it was the religious world that opposed Christ with outraged disbelief. Ignorance and hostility surmounted among Jewish religious leaders. The Lord pointed out the stern fact that even after having exposed the sin of their unbelief through His teachings in addition to God’s revelation in the OT, their rejection of Christ left them totally guilty and without excuse. As the persecution always comes from within, from those in the religious world that has a blind zeal for God, so the persecution of Christ’s true believers would come from the professing Church. In Jn. 16:2 the Lord predicted that the coming Church would be in danger of becoming perpetrators of persecution under a delusion that they were doing great service in the name of the Lord. Under such a regime, true believers would be severely persecuted.
However, in the following verses the Lord also gave a bright promise of the Comforter, i.e., the Holy Spirit to be sent to the world and to the believers for their profit so that He will convict the world of sin; both their disability of believing and unbelief, and the Spirit will refute the adversary completely. When the Spirit comes, men shall be convicted of their sin, which means that, otherwise, men can never see themselves as sinners. Also, when the Spirit comes, the righteousness will be brought about because of Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross. He will reveal that Christ’s death on the cross alone bestows man a righteous status before God. Further, when the Spirit comes, men shall be convicted to judgment because ‘the prince of this world’, Satan has been judged.
The next article shows how the Lord’s warning to His disciples two thousand years ago has lately begun to materialise in the world scene as one of the greatest threats ever raised against born-again Christians. As Christ concluded His warning by referring to the coming of the Spirit for the believers’ benefit, so, the following article concludes with hope in the end for the true body of Christ that they will survive and even triumph during times of persecution.
In January 2014, the Pew Research Center (PRC)—a prestigious think tank based in Washington, DC (which provides information on social issues and demographic trends shaping the world)—published Religious Hostilities Reach Six-Year High.
In this important report, the worldwide public-opinion surveyors chronicled the steady growth of religious persecution around the world and found that social hostilities involving religion are currently most frequently directed against people of Christian faith. The sharpest increase was in the Middle East, which, the reporters surmise, is the result of the 2010-11 political uprisings known as the Arab Spring. That region’s score on the Social Hostilities Index rose from 5.4 in 2011 to 6.4 in 2012, three times the global median…If recent activity is any indication, it may not be long before “one nation under God” joins those red-listed countries where Bible-based believers find themselves under the most severe discrimination…I found that a simple web search produces dozens of headlines and statistics in just a few minutes, illustrating growing hostility to expressions of Christian faith in the United States, such as CNN’s news report, “Legal Group Reports ‘Dramatic Increase’ in Hostility toward Christian Students in Public Schools,” or WND’s interview, “General: U.S. Christians Targeted For Murder.”But what such examples fail to mention is the developing emergence on the world scene of what will become one of the greatest threats ever raised against the authentic (born-again) body of Christ—Religious Christians.For some students of prophecy, the facts outlined here were not only predictable, but were a prophesied prelude to a period in history wherein true believers will be “beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and (for) not worship (ing) the beast, neither his image, neither [receiving] his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands” (Rev 20:4)…Thus the book of Revelation outlines how the political figure of the Antichrist derives ultra-national dominance from the world’s religious faithful through the influence of an ecclesiastical leader (also called the False Prophet) who will not hesitate to swim in the blood of the genuine saints of God.In the days between now and when these men of sin are identified, this reality—that latter-day churchgoers will soon believe they are serving the kingdom of God by participating in or approving the death of conservative Christians—is not a concept lost on all contemporary churchmen. There are those who see things taking shape even now for a war that will eventually pit religious “Christians” against the real members of the body of Christ.For example, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, stated early in 2014 that “modern Christians” will now be “called to suffer and even die for the faith” in a new era “of martyrdom.” But a clarifying document that was not supposed to be made public and which was authored by a senior advisor to Welby’s predecessor details how such a time of great persecution is coming because true believers will, according to the letter, be driven underground by liberal Christians and will become a dissident association comparable to resistance movements during World War II.…Dr. J. Vernon McGee, one of America’s most beloved Bible teachers of the past century, taught the same and clarified that these true Biblical believers would ultimately be driven “underground” by none other than latter-day denominational churches.Another of the twentieth century’s most perceptive writers was pastor and author A. W. Tozer (who was not usually given to prognostication), who likewise wrote: Let me go out on a limb a little bit and prophesy. I see the time coming when all the holy men whose eyes have been opened by the Holy Spirit will desert worldly Evangelicalism, one by one. The house [institutional Christianity] will be left desolate and there will not be a man of God, a man in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, left among them.These Holy-Spirit-devoid church attenders will join other “religious types” to constitute the Antichrist’s apostate religious and political order (connected to “Mystery Babylon” in Revelation, chapter 17) and, as unfathomable as it may sound, will seek to formulate perhaps the most egregious rank among the Man of Sin’s Gestapo members in their appetite for destroying latter-day, truly born-again believers……so many real believers today have already started their exodus from institutional Christianity and are reemerging in home groups, just as the church began in the book of Acts…There is presently a groundswell across America—as in many other parts of the world—in which people are meeting in small groups in homes during the week, rediscovering the Bible, and enjoying a more intimate fellowship than they find in “Sunday church.” Many of these are encouraged and supported by their formal church associations; others simply meet independently. This is especially true of many young people, to whom “Sunday church” is a spectator sport, and who seek more personal participation and accountability.After all, this is the way it all began: twelve guys along the seashore with their Teacher. All the remarkable episodes of the early church in the book of Acts occurred in homes. It wasn’t until the fourth century that edifices began to be erected, when Christians exchanged the rags of the caves for the silks of the court. And committed ambassadors were replaced with hirelings, inserted between an attendee and the Word itself (Thomas Horn, The Coming War on True Christianity, pp.10- 19, Update/July2014).
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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 sustenance of livelihoods and the Word, including the personnel cost of labour for the engagement in an organic vegetable gardens and in a pig breeding and a poultry farming as a primary and preparatory step. Pray for her ministry being blessed by the Lord.