Acts 5.41 observes, the apostles left the high council rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to
suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus.
When the Church started it was considered a badge of honor to suffer for being a Christian. Today, we cower at being maligned for Jesus’ sake.
This fear of man has become greater than our fear of God with the result that most have not heard from Christians that all people must repent and be born again if they are to enter into eternal life. This pagan majority now run our schools, government and many fortune 100 companies. The Christians idly watch the demise of their freedom of religion and increasing moral decay of society.
Evidence of this failure to suffer disgrace was seen last year when Governor Pence from Indiana backed off from signing religious freedom legislation because of persecution from the left that the bill was discriminatory. It wasn’t, but now Christians cannot legally follow their convictions without being sued by a decadent left.
Likewise, were there no Christians at the corporate office of Target when they choose to go gender neutral with their bathroom policy because of pressure from the liberal left? Are there no Christians in the corporate structures of the fortune 100 companies boycotting North Carolina because they won’t pass gender neutral bathroom legislation? Companies like Nike, Apple and Dow Chemical to name only a few.
Christians are easily maligned and ignored today and quite willingly at that! Christians should not use force to initiate change, the muslims do that and so are treated with great respect in the media though their religion is the antithesis to all of their liberal values.
Rather, Christians must stand for truth by disagreeing with policy that is offensive to God. They must encourage doing what is good and right as dictated in the Word of God.
God is not interested in micromanaging either government or the marketplace. He is interested in being obeyed at all times in all places and Christians who shape policy are responsible to do so in a manner that honors God. Failure to fulfill this responsibility is to deny knowing Jesus as Peter did on the night of His betrayal.
Honoring God in government and the marketplace has become harder to do and costlier to implement because Christians of 50 years ago compromised so thoroughly with the culture. The result is the chaos and persecution we are seeing today.
The question for the Church now is will we reverse the trend by loving Jesus more than ourselves or will we continue to watch the erosion of our nation until we return to requiring blood from martyrs to make change?