Preparing For Persecution I

 Some doctrines within Christendom are readily debatable, and unless it becomes acrimonious and people start sending each other to Sheol because they disagree on some tertiary issue, discussion, debate, and deliberation are healthy within a church body and among believers in general.

Iron sharpens iron, not because they are each in their little cubby, safe and sheltered from contact with anything that might change its form, but by collision and often great violence. Iron doesn’t sharpen iron accidentally or without intent. There is always intentionality when one takes a piece of iron and desires to hone it to a fine edge, and it’s a process that can’t be rushed or done haphazardly.

Even after a blade is sharpened to a fine edge, it requires constant sharpening lest it grow dull and overall useless for the purposes it was sharpened for in the first place. There’s nothing worse than a dull knife when you require a sharp one. Have you ever tried to slice a tomato with a dull knife? All you’re likely to end up with is a smooshed tomato and the dream of the perfect sandwich that will never materialize.

While some things the Word foretells are probable for a segment of believers, some are certainties that they will experience to some degree, without exception or exemption. Persecution is one of those things that the Bible warns all believers they will experience to some degree or another, something that they can’t avoid or circumvent no matter how much their flesh may desire to do so.

2 Timothy 3:12, “Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.”

By all, Paul means all, at least all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus. If that is not your desire, you likely wouldn’t be reading these words anyway. The only way for someone not to suffer persecution is to be void of the desire to live godly. There’s no other way of reading this text, and there is no other conclusion we can come to based on what it says.

Knowing that if we desire to live godly in Christ Jesus, we are likely to experience persecution of some kind, the only question that remains to be answered is whether or not we are prepared to suffer it. Yes, I know it’s an uncomfortable topic and one we would rather avoid, but by being prepared for the eventuality of something, we will be far likelier to come through it victoriously, having endured and overcome as the Bible says we ought.

We have an entire generation of believers that was raised with the false notion that they would never have to endure for the sake of Christ, that they would never be called upon to sacrifice or even suffer for the cause of the gospel, and that the only things in their future were prosperous tomorrows. Whenever the prospect of persecution is raised, they are quick to point to the people whose teaching they’ve been sitting under and use them as the counterargument to what the Bible says, insisting that the individuals in question couldn’t have possibly gotten it so wrong.

By whose estimation? If it’s by the Bible, then they most assuredly got it wrong, and horribly so, because while others throughout the world are being persecuted even unto death, only nations in the West can still ignore Paul’s warnings, along with the warnings of Jesus, Peter, John, and a handful of other Biblical writers who all warned that if your desire is the fullness of Christ, then His presence in your life will cause the world to hate you.

It begs the question of why the godless are so in love with some of the most prominent evangelists gracing your television screens today, but we’ll get to peeling that particular onion at some point in this teaching as well.

At some point, the world will be divided into the persecuted and the persecutors, those holding the hammer and the nails, and those laying on the beam because God is not a liar, and His word is true. That much of the church is doing nothing to prepare for that eventuality is a testament against it and reveals the true motives of many in the church.

The household of faith was never meant to coddle, spare feelings, or make people feel warm and fuzzy, but to preach the truth, to rightly divide the Word, and to be a place where we can come together in fellowship, growing in God, and knowing that there are others who share in our travails and hardships. When Aunt Margie’s feelings took precedence over the truth, the whole thing started going sideways, and the more sensitive people became, the less of the truth was being preached from the pulpits. 

Perhaps we need to be reminded that some of the most ardent persecutors of Jesus and His followers were those who claimed to be religious, even the most religious people of their day. Just because someone claims to be religious, it does not eliminate the possibility that at some future time, they’ll be the ones throwing you into prison and passing sentences as though being a follower of Christ was the most heinous and odious thing one could be found guilty of.

It’s easy to ignore the coming storm while the sun is shining. It’s easy to put the notion of persecution out of our minds while we revel in freedom, but our current freedom does not nullify the Word of God nor the warnings He so lovingly proffered to those who would follow in His way.

If God warned of coming persecution, it was so we might prepare for its advent. It wasn’t so we would ignore or doubt His warnings because we currently aren’t experiencing the persecution He warned of. Only fools ignore the warnings of a coming storm because they see no storm clouds, especially when the one doing the warning is the Word of God.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.