Christianity offers the best news in the world. The gospel declares that through faith in Jesus Christ, we receive the forgiveness of our sins. With this assurance of God’s love, comes the promise that we receive a citizenship in heaven, a home has already been prepared for us, and that no sorrow of the present age is able to compare with the glory to come.
For Christians living in the United States, we have enjoyed a period of calm and peace to practice their faith free from persecution with liberties that previous generations never could have imagined. In recent years, something is happening, however, that Christians are struggling to process. Christianity is becoming unwelcome in a country that originally enshrined in its constitution the freedom of religion. The handwriting in on the wall, it’s only a matter of time before, it seems, Christianity may become the great enemy of the state.
This has caused widespread panic among believers not knowing what they should do to combat this vicious assault against their faith. To begin to understand a proper Christian response in times of revolution and persecution, there has to be a biblical appreciation of what exactly is happening behind the scenes, lest our responses themselves undermine the expressed purpose of the Lord in leaving us on the earth.
The Antichrist Crisis
In every given culture throughout history, including the United States, there is present cycle of iniquity that is working itself out to judgment. This is precisely why no nation, even one as great as Rome in its unmatched glory, has avoided a fall throughout the centuries. God told us this would be so throughout history. When God promised Abraham the land of Canaan, a type of the heavenly land promised to all believers, he first called Abraham to patience until a cycle of iniquity ran it course among the Amorites (Gen. 15:16). This was a way of saying that nations will run a course of satantic oppression in evil that, as Meredith Kline observes, “savagely turns against its citizens who refuse its mark.” This necessary to vindicate God’s righteous judgment. Read more»
Chris Gordon | “The Christian Response in Revolutionary Times” | AGR Live | 1 October 2021
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What is the role of the local church in times like these? Our church has and continues to completely ignore all that is going on. If one attended our church you would think it was just another Lord’s Day in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. Our denomination has continued to allow sodomy to be tolerated again without comment. One elder recently prayed “and Lord bless President Biden and Vice President Harris as they work tirelessly for our country…” I started a Matt 5 with him a few days later pointing out that in fact this prayer is a lie, that Biden and Harris are in fact doing everything possible to destroy America and to make evil good and good evil (Is 5:20) through transgenerism, abortion rights, etc. And that he had forced the congregation to pray along with the lie. He changed his wording next time, a little. But as we enter into 1 Peter 4 times I am wanting to get out of our church of over 20 years, not because of false teaching, but because the Watchmen are not telling us of the enemy that is nearing our gates. I want to be taught trained and equipped for the persecution that is already here in the form of vax mandates, forced church closings (reprieved temporarily), etc. How should a believer address this kind of naive or gullible indifference? Or is it not the church’s job? Is a means of grace church just supposed to keep on keeping on and ignore the noise outside? Pastor Chris’s little quote above leaves me without a clear answer to the question.
Randall,
You claim that your denomination (PCA) “has continued to allow sodomy to be tolerated again without comment.” This is simply untrue. The PCA confesses against sodomy and condemns it. The issue at question in the Revoice/Side-B controversy is not whether sodomy is sin. The Revoice/Side-B issue is serious and this rhetoric is unhelpful.
All Christians are called to pray for the magistrate, whomever he or she may be. When Paul called the Christians of Asia Minor to pray for the magistrate, Caesar was a pagan and rather opposed to Christianity. Ditto for Peter’s call to honor the emperor, since at that point some Roman Christians either had been or were about to be put to death for the faith.
We ought to pray that the Lord would give all the magistrates, including our current president, wisdom, humility, repentance, and faith. As much as we may be opposed to his policies, and I certainly am opposed to many of his policies, more than few of which are doing serious damage to the nation, we are still obligated to pray for him.
Please re-read Chris’ essay. He wrote it for you brother.
We live in a twofold kingdom. Your brothers whom you are denouncing are your brothers in Christ. Are you closer to your cultural-political friends than to your brothers and sisters in Christ?
Pardon my error, I meant Matthew 18
There is no question we are living through at least a political pandemic similar to and rooted in the French, Russian and Chinese Revolutions, but the bottom line as always is the Word of God.
IOW if ‘judgment must begin at the house of God’ (1 Pet. 4:17) is the answer to the question, “Where is the Lord in all of this?”, then the Corona virus is the church’s warning. I am not so sure that at least the P&R church has heard it.