Persecution Is a Certainty

Read Matthew 10:16-42

      Jesus wasn’t just speaking to the twelve disciples he was sending out on a short-term missionary tour to Jewish towns and villages, but to all his followers in generations to come who would read his words, and particularly to those who would live during the time immediately “before the Son of Man comes” (10:23).  

      In the centuries since, wrote D.A. Carson in 1995, “Christians have been crucified, burned, impaled, drowned, starved, racked – for no other reason than that they belonged to him.”  Had he written more recently, he might have added “bombed, burned, shot, and beheaded.” 

      The philosophical underpinnings for persecution of Christians within our own culture are in place as never before in that there has been a near complete moral inversion – in short, evil is called good and good is called evil (Isaiah 5:20).  Wherever persecution is open and intense, the persecutors see themselves as preservers of good and punishers of evil. 

      Be not afraid.  Fear God and therefore no one else.  Sharing in Christ’s suffering confirms us as his people, and the rewards of faithfulness to him, no matter how the world punishes it, will be incomparably greater than the cost (Romans 8:18).