Prisoners of Hope
Persecution has not been in America, but it is coming. In fact in some ways it has already started. The government is watching us, and have tore down our sign out front as a warning for us to no longer continue having worship services that aren’t state sponsored. We have been comfortable for so long we somehow think that persecution is unbiblical. However, more than 25% of Jesus words in the New Testament refer to suffering and persecution for our faith. It was so widespread that Paul concluded that everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ.
Yes, and everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
2 Timothy 3:12 (NLT)
Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. (KJV)
Don’t forget about those in prison. Suffer with them as though you were there yourself. Share the sorrow of those being mistreated, as though you feel their pain in your own bodies.
Hebrews 13:3 (NLT)
Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. (KJV)
I Religious Freedom was what our Country was founded on.
I am not a conspiracy theorist that sees conspiracy everywhere, but there is a major anti Christian movement in education system. The history textbooks are being rewritten to be more politically correct. Giving different reasons why our ancestors came to Amercia in the first place.
Rewriting History
The last three generations of Americans simply have not been told the truth about American history. Active humanists and the liberal media have for years undertaken a concentrated effort to misinform the American public by attacking the "Religious Right" and rewriting America’s Judeo-Christian history in a humanistic tone. The motto at the heart of the American experiment "in God we trust" has been exchanged for "in Man we trust." www.jeremiahproject.com
A few years ago, Dr. Paul Vitz, then professor of psychology at New York University, worked with a committee that examined sixty social studies and history textbooks used in public schools across the United States. The committee was amazed to find that almost every reference to the Christian influence of early America was systematically removed. Their conclusion: the writers of the commonly used textbooks exhibited paranoia of the Christian religion and intentionally censored Christianity’s positive role in American history. Www.worthynews.com
If you want more information see Wallbuilders.com and David Barton.Because the #1 reason was religious freedom. They were fleeing religious persecution. The separation of church and state concept was to keep the government out of the Church, but liberal lawyer and judges have completely misapplied to mean keeping religion out of the government. That was the furthest thing from our founders minds.
William Penn, Roger Williams, Purtians , Pilgrims
This exhibition demonstrates that many of the colonies that in 1776 became the United States of America were settled by men and women of deep religious convictions who in the seventeenth century crossed the Atlantic Ocean to practice their faith freely.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/
Many of the British North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of America were settled in the seventeenth century by men and women, who, in the face of European persecution, refused to compromise passionately held religious convictions and fled Europe. The New England colonies, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were conceived and established "as plantations of religion." Some settlers who arrived in these areas came for secular motives--"to catch fish" as one New Englander put it--but the great majority left Europe to worship God in the way they believed to be correct. They enthusiastically supported the efforts of their leaders to create "a city on a hill" or a "holy experiment," whose success would prove that God’s plan for his churches could be successfully realized in the American wilderness. Even colonies like Virginia, which were planned as commercial ventures, were led by entrepreneurs who considered themselves "militant Protestants" and who worked diligently to promote the prosperity of the church.
Beginning in 1630 as many as 20,000 Puritans emigrated to America from England to gain the liberty to worship God as they chose. Most settled in New England, but some went as far as the West Indies. Theologically, the Puritans were "non-separating Congregationalists." Unlike the Pilgrims, who came to Massachusetts in 1620, the Puritans believed that the Church of England was a true church but in new of reform. (Cotton Mather -Puritan -accused unfairly of beginning the Salem witch trials.)
"All persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the One Almighty and Eternal God to be the Creator, Upholder, and Ruler of the world, and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall in no wise be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion or practice, in matters of faith and worship; nor shall they be compelled at any time to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever." April 25, 1662- William Penn signed this to establish religious liberty in the new Provence of (Pennsylvania).
Every man "ought to be protected in worshiping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience." - George Washington (Letter to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia in May, 1789)
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on religion but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ." - Patrick Henry
II Believers in the Bible Did not have the Freedom We enjoy
a. Priests of Nob - 85 were killed by Saul for help David escape 1 Samuel 22
b. Prophets -Jezebel killed so many Elijah thought he was only one left 1Kings 18
c. Micaiah -King Ahab put in prison for Prophesying for God 2 Chron 18
d. Zechariah - was executed by King Joash for confronting sin 2 Chron. 24
e. Uriah -killed with sword by Jehoiakim for confronting him about evil ways
Jeremiah 26
f. Jeremiah was thrown into prison and muddy cistern for telling of Jerusalem¡¯s fall.
G. Three Hebrew boys- thrown into fiery furnace for not bowing Daniel 3
h. Daniel- thrown in lions den for praying Daniel 6
i. John the baptist-beheaded for confronting King¡¯s adultery Matthew 14
j. Peter & John thrown in prison for preaching Jesus -Acts 4
k. James beheaded to please the Jewish leaders Acts 12
l. Paul was stoned for confronting money making gods
m. John was exiled to remote island. Rev 1
III Christians in Church History did not have the Freedom we do
Death of the Apostles
-Matthew suffered martyrdom by being slain with a sword at a distant city of Ethiopia.
-Mark expired at Alexandria, after being cruelly dragged through the streets of that city.
-Luke was hanged upon an olive tree in the classic land of Greece.
-John was put in a caldron of boiling oil, but escaped death in a miraculous manner, and was afterward banished to Patmos.
-Peter was crucified at Rome with his head downward.
-James, the Greater, was beheaded at Jerusalem.
-James, the Less, was thrown from a lofty pinnacle of the temple, and then beaten to death with a fuller¡¯s club.
-Bartholomew was flayed alive.
-Andrew was bound to a cross, whence he preached to his persecutors until he died.
-Thomas was run through the body with a lance at Coromandel in the East Indies.
-Jude was shot to death with arrows.
-Matthais was first stoned and then beheaded.
-Barnabas of the Gentiles was stoned to death at Salonica.
-Paul, after various tortures and persecutions, was at length beheaded at Rome by the Emperor Nero.
Source unknown
What Became of the Twelve Disciples?
1. 1. John died of extreme old age in Ephesus.
2. Judas Iscariot, after betraying his Lord, hanged himself.
3. Peter was crucified, head downward, during the persecution of Nero.
4. Andrew died on a cross at Patrae, in Achaia, a Grecian Colony.
5. James, the younger brother of the Savior, was thrown from a pinnacle of the Temple, and then beaten to death with a club.
6. Bartholomew was flayed alive in Albanapolis, Armenia.
7. James, the elder son of Zebedee, was beheaded at Jerusalem.
8. Thomas, the doubter, was run through the body with a lance at Coromandel, in the east Indies.
9. Philip was hanged against a pillar at Heropolis (Abyssinia).
10. Thaddeus was shot to death with arrows.
11. Simon died on a cross in Persia (now Iran).
Source unknown
Foxes Book of Martyrs
John Wickliff, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, and many more including John Hus.
Seal With My Blood
The Bohemian reformer John Hus was a man who believed the Scriptures to be the infallible and supreme authority in all matters. He died at the stake for that belief in Constance, Germany, on his forty-second birthday.
As he refused a final plea to renounce his faith, Hus’s last words were, "What I taught with my lips, I seal with my blood."
Source unknown
Polycarp
2. Polycarp (A.D. 70-155) was bishop of Smyrna and a godly man. He had known the apostle John personally. When he was urged by the Roman proconsul to renounce Christ, Polycarp said: "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury. How then can I blaspheme my King and my Savior?"
"I have respect for your age," said the official. "Simply say, "Away with the atheists"¯ and be set free."
The aged Polycarp pointed to the pagan crowd and said, "Away with the atheists!" He was burned at the stake and gave joyful testimony of his faith in Jesus Christ.
Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching & Preachers, W. Wiersbe, p. 214
Burned at the Stake
I am not come hither to deny my Lord and Master.
Anne Askew July 16, 1545 burned at the stake after torture on the rack, at the age of 25
China’s Boxer Rebellion
During China’s Boxer Rebellion of 1900, insurgents captured a mission station, blocked all the gates but one, and in front of that one gate placed a cross flat on the ground. Then the word was passed to those inside that any who trampled the cross underfoot would be permitted their freedom and life, but that any refusing would be shot. Terribly frightened, the first seven students trampled the cross under their feet and were allowed to go free. But the eighth student, a young girl, refused to commit the sacrilegious act. Kneeling beside the cross in prayer for strength, she arose and moved carefully around the cross, and went out to face the firing squad. Strengthened by her example, every one of the remaining ninety-two students followed her to the firing squad.
Today in the Word, Feb. 89, p. 17
IV Christians Around the World do not have the Freedom we do
If you thought Christian martyrdom was merely a part of history, listen to this statistic: more Christians have been killed for their faith in this century alone than in the previous nineteen centuries combined. According to Paul Marshall, author of Their Blood Cries Out, in more than 60 countries worldwide, Christians are harassed, abused, arrested, tortured or executed specifically because of their faith. Two hundred million Christians throughout the world live in daily fear of secret police, vigilantes, or state repression and discrimination.
The examples of religious persecution are, as Chuck Colson describes, "heartbreakingly plentiful."
In Sudan, a nine-year-old boy was thrown into a truck and driven to a concentration camp where he was savagely beaten until he renounced Christ and converted to Islam.
In China, three Protestant evangelicals, including a 36-year-old woman, were beaten to death by police in connection with a government crackdown on the independent house-church movement. It is estimated that up to one hundred million Chinese Christians risk their lives daily by defying government orders banning free worship.
In Cuba, a Baptist pastor was arrested because of his success in evangelizing young people. During his detention, he was forced to spend the night in a cell with a live bear.
Iranian Pastor Faces Death Penalty
Hamid Pourmand faces charge of apostasy and possible death sentence.
LOS ANGELES, April 7, 2005 (Compass) -- Iranian Christian Hamid Pourmand must appear before the Islamic (sharia) court of Iran within nine days. An exact court date has not been released. Arrested last September when security police raided a church conference he was attending, the Assemblies of God lay pastor will be brought up before the Islamic court between April 11 and 14 to face charges of apostasy from Islam and proselytizing Muslims to the Christian belief. Both crimes are punishable by death.
Pourmand, now 47, converted from Islam to Christianity nearly 25 years ago. He spent several months in solitary confinement after his arrest last September 9, the only one of more than 80 church leaders arrested at the conference who was not released.
India Christians Attacked for Watching ’Passion of The Christ’
Monday, 28 March 2005
By BosNewsLife News Center
NEW DELHI, INDIA (BosNewsLife)-- At least one Christian was seriously injured when Hindu militants "brutally attacked" church members in India’s southern Kerala state for watching the film ’The Passion of The Christ’, an official confirmed Monday, March 28.
The national governor of Christian advocacy group Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), Sajan K George, told BosNewsLife the incident happened on Easter eve in Kerala’s oldest church, the ’Kanai Church’, in the Chalakud Taluka region.
He said 25 activists of the Hindu fundamentalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) interrupted the screening of the famous movie of Academy Award winning Director Mel Gibson, when they raided the church and began beating parishioners.
"The RSS members did not even spare women and children," he added. "The attack left
one of the parishioners, Mr. George Kutty, seriously injured," George said. The RSS was not immediately available for comment.
In Iraq it’s war on Christians
Car bombs rip through 5 churches, killing more than a dozen, in coordinated jihad attack. Iraqi Christians have been experiencing increasing persecution since the country was liberated.
(WorldNetDaily)
V The Door of Freedom is Closing in America
Religious Persecution in America 2/5/1998
Religious persecution still exists in the United States. Albuquerque (N.M.) Public School Superintendent Peter Horoschak fired Highland High School choir director Frank Rotolo for not referring to other religions in a Christmas concert given at the school in December. Rotolo changed the name of the concert to "A Winter Concert" from "A Christmas Concert," however it was not enough to save his job. Rotolo pulled a solo performance of "O Holy Night," but decided to have the choir sing more than 15 numbers, roughly half of which included Christian themes (Associated Press, 1/25/98).
Concerned Women for America contacted Ross Elder, a 1958 Highland High School graduate and vocal singer in the choir for his insight on the situation. In the late fifties the Highland choir performed such pieces as Schubert’s Mass in G and many other sacred pieces. The bureaucrats are claiming [Rotolo is] advocating a particular religion by performing it. Actually the opposite is true, a lot of good music is sacred music and you would be limiting the repertoire without it. Elder continued, [Peter Horoschak] carried this way too far.
A new generation of children are taught by their educators to be tolerant of different lifestyles and religions. Does this only include tolerance for every religion except Christianity? Much of our heritage is influenced by Christianity, yet the politically correct are winning the battle for our children’s minds.
Our religious values and beliefs are challenged more and more every day. Take a stand for religious freedom today. Contact your legislator and ask them to make the Religious Freedom Amendment a top priority.
’Easter’ Bunny Gives Way To ’Spring’ Bunny (Christmas to Happy Holidays)
Local Mall Goes P.C. For Religious Holiday
Customers at a local area mall are being taken by surprise to find that the Easter Bunny they’ve come to know and love now has a new name.
Easter Bunny With Children
In fact, The Shops at Willow Bend in Plano now refers to the Easter icon as the "Spring Bunny."
However, some customers don’t like the new trend.
"It makes me sad, because I think Easter is really important. The message is important," Plano mother Deidra Klemm said. "And I think it’s wrong to call him the Spring Bunny. Let’s just say what he really is."
Klemm is not alone. Another unidentified mother said, "The Easter Bunny is the Easter Bunny. There’s no getting around it."
According to a Willow Bend representative, the Spring Bunny is a celebration of the season for all faiths to enjoy.
Phildelphia 5
Then came the homosexual sponsored "Outfest" in Philadelphia last fall.
A small group of Christian activists decided to protest at the event that occurred on October 10, 2004. A self-proclaimed homosexual security group called the Pink Angels decided to prevent the Christians from exercising their constitutional liberties. There was plenty of jostling and heated words but the videotape of the event shows no actual violence occurring. The Pink Angels went free. The Christian protestors were not so lucky.
Eleven Christians ended up in jail. Five Christians faced charges. Four adult Christians were ordered by Judge William Austin Meehan to stand trial on charges of criminal conspiracy, possession of instruments of crime, reckless endangerment of another person, ethnic intimidation, riot, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct and obstructing highways. The Christians who quoted Scripture (which led to their being charged) confronted the possibility of total prison sentences as long as 47 years. A teenager was charged as a juvenile.
A requirement for bail prohibited the Christian activists from staying at least 100 feet away from any homosexual event. Fortunately, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas
Judge Pamela Dembe overturned that requirement because it represented an unusual restriction on a person’s right to speech.
Diane Gramley, President of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, reminded Pennsylvanians, "Our prediction of the arrest of Christians under this law became true in October."
¡ö Tolerance of anti-Christian attitudes in the United States is escalating.
¡ö Recently, a woman in Houston, Texas was ordered by local police to stop handing out gospel tracts to children who knocked on her door during Halloween. Officers informed her that such activity is illegal (not true), and that she would be arrested if she continued.
¡ö In Madison, Wisconsin, the Freedom from Religion Foundation distributes anti-Christian pamphlets to public school children entitled, "We Can Be Good Without God."
¡ö The entertainment industry and syndicated media increasingly vilify Christians as sewer rats, vultures, and simple-minded social ingrates.
¡ö The FBI and the Clinton White House brand fundamentalist Christian groups as hate mongers and potential terrorists.
¡ö The Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago warns that plans by Southern Baptists to hold a convention in the Windy City next year might foment "hate crimes" against minorities, causing some Christians to fear that speaking openly about their religious beliefs will soon be considered a crime. All this, while Christianity itself is often a target of hate-crime violence.
¡ö We remember the students at Columbine, and the United Methodist minister who was fatally beaten and burned in a remote part of Chattanooga, Tennessee, to name a few of the recent examples of interpersonal violence aimed at believers.
Www.worthynew.com
* Battle over 10 commandments monument in Alabama Judge Roy Moore
The media slyly smears Christian conservatives by calling bomb-throwing radical Muslims "fundamentalists" and even "the religious right." And while it trumpets victims of racial and anti-homosexual "hate crimes," it glosses over crimes against Christians (as well as pro-life victims and victims of homosexual violence). Most media talking heads even failed to mention the fanatical anti-Christian statements of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
In Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity, David Limbaugh uncovers a mountain of evidence of large-scale, across-the-board discrimination against Christians in the public and academic spheres? accompanied by an alarming determination on the part of the left to eradicate Christian influences from our culture and even our history.
But that war isn’t restricted only to the courts. Limbaugh documents concerted anti-Christian activity across the spectrum of modern life: in public schools, universities, and textbooks that denigrate or ignore Christianity, in wrangles over the presence of Christian symbols on government property, in the muzzling of public officials, in public attacks on churches and Christians, and even in attempts to drive Christianity out of the public activities of private enterprises.
Persecution’s chapters on public schools are positively hair-raising. Sex education programs in schools have promoted, not prevented, sexual promiscuity among teenagers, but along with libertinism goes paganism.
Limbaugh reports that public schools all over the nation have instituted "death education" programs, which led at least one student to consider suicide.
Students in one school participated in a pagan Mexican ritual that involves worshiping the dead; in another, they completed exercises out of a workbook that told them, "you and your classmates will become Muslims."
Modern War against Christianity I , II, CD from Focus on Family
If you think Christians are only persecuted in other countries, think again.
While American believers aren’t thrown in jail ¡ª at least not yet ¡ª they are routinely denied the opportunity to express their faith. Political columnist David Limbaugh discusses several topics from his new book Persecution, including how secularists use the First Amendment as a weapon against Christians, and how the media, homosexual activists and public educators continue to chip away at Christian values.
Conclusion: Jesus said it would happen:
Matthew 24:9 "Then you will be arrested, persecuted, and killed. You will be hated all over the world because of your allegiance to me.
John 15:18 (Suffering identifies us with Jesus)
"When the world hates you, remember it hated me before it hated you.
1 Peter 2:20 (The Right way to Suffer)
Of course, you get no credit for being patient if you are beaten for doing wrong. But if you suffer for doing right and are patient beneath the blows, God is pleased with you.
1 Peter 3:14 (GOD WILL REWARD)
But even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don’t be afraid and don’t worry.
1 Timothy 4: 10 (REASON FOR SUFFERING)
We work hard and suffer much in order that people will believe the truth, for our hope is in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and particularly of those who believe.
Philippians 1:14 And because of my imprisonment, many of the Christians here have gained confidence, and become more bold in telling others about Christ.
Noble Alexander baptized 300 in 21 years in prison in Cuba (from Voice of the Martyrs)
