“They Will Also Persecute You”
A pastor in northern Nigeria, about to be beheaded in July 2009 by an Islamist group for refusing to convert to Islam, appealed to a fellow captive: “If you survive, tell my brothers that I died well and am living with Christ”. Professing Christians among the Karen people are greatly persecuted by the Burmese military government. Christians in the Punjab Province of Pakistan had at least 100 homes burned down in mob violence and many more looted or vandalised, while a similar incident nearby resulted in seven deaths.
Two Christians in China were sentenced to ten and seven years in prison for aiding North Koreans who tried to flee to South Korea through China to escape persecution. A Chinese pastor was convicted of divulging state secrets and sentenced to 15 years in prison after giving innocent interviews to media outside China. Five leaders of an unregistered church were sentenced by the Chinese authorities to between three and a half and seven years for holding a service, regarded as “assembling a crowd to disrupt public order”.
Two women were imprisoned in Iran for converting to Christianity and refusing to return to Islam. Men in this situation are liable to the death penalty. Throughout the Middle East, even in countries regarded as allies of the West, Christians suffer various degrees of persecution, especially if they have converted from Islam. “Saudi law is based on Islamic sharia, and it prescribes the death sentence for converts from Islam. Public Christian worship is forbidden, even for the large expatriate community, and Christians may be detained, assaulted or deported for meeting to pray together even in private.” These notes are taken, almost at random, from recent editions of the Magazine of the Barnabas Fund and other periodicals.
As noted previously in connection with this subject, many of those professing Christians do not have the heritage and understanding for which we shall have to give an account. But they suffer because they are identified, in their own courageous confession and in the minds of their persecutors, with the Lord Jesus Christ. “But all these things will they do unto you for My name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent Me” (John 15:20). Surely we should pray for them and support those who seek to aid them directly or to bring pressure on the governments of “free” nations to intervene on their behalf.
We used to wonder when old ministers expressed the fear that persecution would yet overtake Christians in the United Kingdom but now, although certain freedoms of speech are still safeguarded by law, persistent attempts are being made to restrict even peaceful and reasoned criticism of what Christians can only regard as religious and moral deviations and perversions. Laws which already exist have been used by police and prosecuting authorities against persons who have engaged in such criticism, even in private discussions, but scorn can be poured on the cherished beliefs of those who adhere to the Christian faith established in our nation, and on their God and Saviour; and those adhering to that faith can be derided as bigots or something less polite. Employers have come down heavily on the most unobtrusive Christian witness of, for example, a care worker to a troubled client. There are professions which a Christian cannot readily practise because, for example, scriptural beliefs prevent a registrar from officiating at civil partnerships. How increasingly difficult it is becoming in some situations to be a Christian doctor, primary school teacher, social worker.
On the grand scale of sufferings, the public harassment which most Christians experience may as yet amount to no more than the smiting on the face to which Paul refers in 2 Corinthians 11:20, though some may have severe trials personally. But it is time we awoke to serious realisation that the freedoms this nation began to enjoy with the Reformation, established in its Scottish form 450 years ago, are being progressively eroded by an intrusive state, which promotes legislation attempting to force even on churches the recognition of laws and practices hostile to the law of God, and which has a cowardly fear of the militant elements of non-Biblical religions. The more secular, morally liberal and religiously neutral Britain becomes, the more restrictions will be imposed on the Christian witness, whether positive or negative, in word or deed.
HMC
Comments on Other Magazines
A writer in the Calvinistic Baptist publication Reformation Today, concluding a series on the Psalms, discusses which psalms, in his opinion, are “of most obvious value in public worship”. He mentions Psalms 92, 93, 95-100 and 145-150 as “suitable for opening or closing public worship”; Psalm 103 as suitable “for all seasons”; Psalms 65, 67, 113, 127, 128 and 134 as “relevant and useful”; and allows that Psalms 1, 19 and 119 “can have their place”. He suggests that the so-called “penitential Psalms”, in particular Psalms 32, 51 and 130, “may be of value in public worship”, as may Psalm 42. The “Messianic Psalms”, by which he means Psalms 2, 8, 16, 22, 45, 72, 118 (and possibly Psalms 69 and 116 – he is not sure about these), “are of immense value, but need to be familiar, or explained, to the worshippers”.
His selection comes as something of a surprise. We believe, of course, that all the psalms, and only the psalms, are to be used in public worship, but we would expect a list of the most commonly-sung psalms to include Psalms 23, 27, 34, 46, 63, 73, 84, 89, 107, 121, 122, 126, 133 and perhaps several others. One practical effect of hymn-singing, we see, is to deprive congregations of all this treasure.
In a different direction, the magazine Bible League Quarterly, edited by Rev John Thackway, has carried two articles exposing “the “Deepening Downgrade in the FIEC” (the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches)”. One prominent FIEC church, Carey Baptist Church in Reading, supports a missionary in Poland who is overtly ecumenical. Neither the church nor the FIEC is prepared to express disapproval of the missionary. Without entering into the merits of the case, we are glad to see the Bible League Quarterly tackling the issue. English Evangelicalism has suffered from an unbiblical tendency to avoid controversy of this sort, allowing Satan to spread error unopposed. Those who will not turn a blind eye to the dangerous errors of other professing “Evangelicals” are all too often dismissed as being of a sour and unchristian spirit.
On a more positive note, the new editor of Banner of Truth Magazine, Rev Jonathan Watson, draws attention to an article written by a former editor, Rev Iain Murray, in January 1960. At that time, Mr Murray reported, “no Christian magazine exists for the Jews in Palestine”; “in Portuguese-speaking Brazil, Reformed books are non-existent, and even works that are “Evangelical” are few”; “the story is much the same in India”; “behind the “Iron Curtain” the situation is, of course, even worse . . . there is no such thing as freedom of the press”; while in China there was a desperate need for Christian literature to satisfy the “spiritual starvation”. “How things have changed!” Mr Watson comments. “Fifty years later, good Christian books are available in ever increasing quantities in all of these places and more beside.” Perhaps another 50 years will see the end of Evolutionism and political correctness, and even of Romanism and Islam. Christ is going forth “conquering and to conquer” (Rev 6:2). “Every plant, which My heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up” (Mt 15:13). DWBS
A Disturbing Proposal
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg appears, in an interview with a columnist on The Independent newspaper, to be shamelessly attempting to buy the homosexual vote in the forthcoming General Election in the United Kingdom. Particularly disturbing is his proposal to force all schools – including faith schools – to teach that homosexuality is “normal and harmless”.
But it is not normal and, spiritually and morally, it certainly is not harmless. The Bible’s teaching is clear, but then Mr Clegg is an atheist (though his wife is a Roman Catholic and his children are being brought up as Roman Catholics). When he became party leader, he declared that one of his priorities was to defend civil liberties, but it would seem that he has put a very large question mark over the liberty to believe that homosexual activity is a serious sin. We live in an age when God is, in judgement, increasingly giving people up “unto vile affections” (Rom 1:26). Woe betide those nations where people like Mr Clegg obtain power; in a magazine interview in 2008 he admitted to sleeping with “no more than 30” women.