Praise the Lord for this winter season... spring is not far away. The days are
getting longer. We have had some cloudless days. The fields and meadows and
the hills and the mountains are covered with white snow. When the sunlight
beams on snow it sparkles and it dazzles. . . "A thing of beauty is a joy for
ever". I saw a deer by the parsonage galloping on through the deep snow,
jubilant and carefree. That deer knows that the Lord is taking care of her
somehow. Alice and I drove a couple of days ago on an Interstate, from which we
could see snow covered hills and fields as afs far your eyes could reach. I
said "How great is our God". Yesterday morning we looked up and saw a "snowbow"
- very rare around here. The western USA is expericing summer like weather. I
am sure it is coming our way sooner or later.
We are stunned and saddened by the news of
Christians killed all over the world. It seems that it has been open season on
Christians. Coptic Christians from Egypt were killed by barbaric Moslem
terrorists in Lybia. More are killed Nigeria. We grieve and ask, "how long
Lord?". Richard Wurmbrandt was a pastor in the persecuted Romanian Underground
Church in 1940's-60's. He tells the story of an occasion when armed police
broke into a church service. “If you are not a true believer you may leave",
the police said and pointed their guns. Some of the worshippers left, the
majority remained, fearing for their lives. When the unbelievers had left, the
police put down their guns. “We are Christians too,” they said, “But we only
want to share fellowship with those who consider the truth worth dying
for.”
What would I have done, I wonder? Would I have stayed or left? Are we
“those who consider the truth worth dying for?”
Jesus said in Mark 8:35, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it but
whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” Through the
ages many Christians have been courageous enough to sacrifice their lives for
Jesus Christ and for the sake of the gospel. John the Baptist was the first –
the very first Christian martyr. The life story of John the Baptist does not
have a happy ending, but It has given Christians across the ages courage and
hope as an example of faithfulness in the face of persecution, suffering, and
even death. Early Church history gives similar examples from the lives of the
apostles. Peter reputedly was crucified upside-down, and James was killed by
the sword. We read about Paul’s sufferings in 2 Corinthians 11. Many
Christians followed these first martyrs to death in the first three centuries of
the church when they refused to bow down to the Roman Emperor.
My favorite writer of that period was called Tertullian, and around 200
AD he wrote, “If the Tiber rises too high or the Nile too low the cry is always
the same: 'The Christians to the Lion!' What? All of them, to a single lion?”
Countless thousands of Christians were martyred in those centuries, but still
they stood firm for Christ, and this faithfulness in the face of persecution
became one of the most powerful factors contributing to the growth of the early
church. Their deaths were their witness – and in fact the word martyr actually
means witness – those who witness for Christ even up to death. So Tertullian
also wrote these memorable words, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
church.”
The twentieth century saw its share of martyrs too, from Jim
Elliott of Missionary Aviation Fellowship, working with the Auca Indians, to the
sufferings of Christians in the Communist Bloc to the persecution of the church
in China after the Cultural Revolution, to the murders of Christians in Orissa,
India in 2008, and in African countries such as Nigeria even today. So many
Christians are dying for Christ because they consider the truth to be worth
dying for.
Psalm 116:15, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his
saints."
Even today the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
church.
Stuart Townend’s beautiful song, “With a
prayer you fed the hungry” has an interesting last verse. It goes,
I
will feed the poor and hungry, I will stand up for the truth;
I will
take my cross and follow To the corners of the earth.
And I ask that
You so fill me With Your peace, Your power, Your breath,
That I never
love my life so much To shrink from facing death."
Philippians 1:21 "For to me, to live is Christ
and to die is gain." 2 Corinthians 5:9 "So we make it our goal to
please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from
it."
The great cricketer who
became a missionary to the Congo, C.T.Studd, wrote, “If Jesus Christ be God and
died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”
Spurgeon said that the gospel comes to comfort
us in our afflictions but also to afflict us in our comforts. The death of John
the Baptist is an inspiration and an encouragement to Christians suffering
persecution, but to those of us who are not persecuted or imprisoned for our
faith it still gives us an example to follow, as do the lives of our brothers
and sisters who belong to the suffering church in so many places still
today. The blood of the martyrs is still the seed of the
church.
In Christ,
Brown
http://youtu.be/3qEjRLlL9iE
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment