Preparing for Persecution II

It didn’t take long for persecution to begin in earnest. Once the early Church was established, so too was persecution a common thing among the brethren, for wherever the light is, the darkness is there to try and prevent it from spreading, if not to extinguish it altogether. The devil prefers the latter, but he’ll settle for the former because he knows the power of the God on the side of those he is trying to destroy. He is not ignorant. He knows he can’t win in the long run, but the kind of hate he harbors towards the children of God blinds him to his situation, and so he rages.

Since the enemy concluded they could not be tempted away from the truth, he hoped they could be scared away from it, threatened into silence, and after the advent of the Holy Spirit and the pouring out thereof, the organized persecution of the followers of Christ began to take shape.

That we would read the book of Acts and expect our lot in life as children of God to be any different than those who came before us take some kind of entitled egotism that I can hardly imagine. Some among us even lean toward arrogance and conceit, looking down our noses on the men and women God used to perform signs and wonders the likes of which we only hear stories of because they weren’t prosperous and didn’t have the best of everything and save for one here or there, all died gruesome deaths at the hands of their persecutors.

John the revelator got to retire on the island of Patmos, but only after being thrown in boiling oil. It wasn’t so much retirement as it was exile, and God kept him alive so that he might be the scribe for what would later be known as the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

I don’t know whether it’s the fact that we allowed the Scriptures to get so twisted in our day and age or that so many people believe the twisted gospel that bothers me more. One thing is certain: because so many believe another gospel, when persecution commences in the West, there will be a stampede for the exits the likes of which Christendom has never seen. Jesus warned it would be so since before a handful of people met in the upper room of a nondescript home and prayed until they received the promise.

The promise they were waiting on had nothing to do with advancement, earthly treasures, estates, mansions, jets, or fineries, but rather something infinitely more valuable, priceless even, something that could not be purchased with all the gold or silver in the world.

The sad reality is that when we focus on earthly things, on prosperity and possessions, we settle for less, far less, than what God has reserved for His children and those who call Him Father.

When we read the Acts of the Apostles, we must do so through the prism of seeing it as the prototypical church. This is what God intended the church to be, this is how God intended the church to operate, and it is what ought to have been used as a blueprint and guidepost for all the churches going forward.

It was never meant to be about positions and acquisitions; it was never meant to be about hoarding wealth or forming our cliques within cliques; it was meant to be about fellowship and brotherhood, about the presence of the Holy Spirit and the attitude of selflessness that defined the primary church.

Because the Book of Acts is the prototype for the church, we would do well to begin our study of persecution and how we must prepare for it there. I can’t promise we will cover all the angles or that it will be the most in-depth work on the topic, but Lord willing, we will endeavor to cover all the necessary points and discuss the oft-ignored benefits of persecution, which are plainly enumerated within the pages of Scripture.

Once the Holy Spirit descended and the Promise had been received, the handful of people, some 120 to be exact, the core of what was the early Church, or the primary Church, hit the ground running.

They didn’t spend the next six months congratulating themselves on having waited until they received the power of the Holy Spirit; they didn’t sit around telling each other how spiritual they all were; they began the work of the Kingdom and went out preaching the risen Christ.

That same day, in fact, that same hour, as the people gathered to see what all the commotion was about, Peter, the man who once denied Christ before a servant girl, now stood before the glut of people gathered together and fearlessly preached the Gospel to those who would hear. Did all receive it? No, some mocked and said they were full of new wine, but others heeded Peter’s message, and three thousand souls were baptized on that day and added to the number of the household of faith.

Not bad for a day’s work. Three thousand is a solid number, what one might deem a mega-church nowadays, and the hundred and twenty could have spent the rest of their time consolidating their positions, starting a building fund, doing a bit of marketing, and coasting on the tithes for the rest of their days. That, however, was not their purpose. Their purpose wasn’t self-glory; it was God’s glory. Their purpose wasn’t to consolidate a group of three thousand souls and garner a reputation for themselves; it was to tirelessly preach the gospel to all who would hear, for as far and wide as they could reach, hoping that more would come to the saving knowledge of Jesus.

Their growth was not contrived; it was not something they had to have five-year plans for; the core group didn’t get together to see what they could tweak in the message to get more people to show up; they preached Christ, Him crucified, Him Risen, Him Lord, and trusted that God would stir the hearts of those who heard, and cause them to seek redemption through faith in Jesus.

Acts 2:46, “So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”

The Lord added to the church daily, and no man can destroy what the Lord has built. That’s how you know it was God and not the work of man, for though all might be against a work, if God is for it, and if He has built it, it will remain. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.