
“The way forward is the way back.” “Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” Outside of Scripture, these could be the most timely and urgent quotations of our day!
From its very beginning, the Church was over against much of its environment. What repented was received and redeemed. Those who did not repent were anti-Christian. There was no neutrality as we know it today.
“The Church’s first duty was to organize itself in such a way that it could most effectively resist physical persecution,” emphasizes historian Erik Routley of Mansfield College, Oxford. It is time for everyone to understand this is the right thing to do!
In the past 20 centuries, there were only brief periods without persecution. Indeed, persecution is on the rise globally, today, and it is time to understand what this means for the North American Church.
As often perceived, through the centuries, it was the State which opposed Christianity. Ultimately, Christianity always triumphed. Too, persecution often caused Christianity to grow with a harvest of new and dedicated converts. Christian minds were sharpened by controversy, and spirits refined by persecution.
Christians saw with ancient Rome that it was Stoicism which took hold on the heart of Rome – much as secularism (an offshoot of Marxism) has done today. Marxism was defined by Jewish convert Richard Wurmbrand as Satanism. Too many politicians and oligarchs today are not only Marxists, but Luciferians, worshiping Satan openly as Klaus Schwab and Hillary Clinton do today.
These control the State with their routine payola, bribes and insider-trading tips to politicians, who end up being anti-Christian as a result. These also work to destroy Christian society and values via billions in grants to UNESCO and the NEA.
The bloodiest and most extensive campaigns of Rome against the Church were those under Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Decius and Valerian. Marcus Aurelius was one of the greatest Stoic philosophers Rome produced. Rome’s philosophical expressions had much in common with Stoicism, which was incompatible with Christianity. The Christian could not tolerate the image of the emperor on its altar. But the Church met this persecution defiantly and triumphantly!
And so it will be again today! But the Church must first tune in to resist and defy, resist and defy, resist and defy, God’s way, to once again be victorious as were its forebears! That is, as its forebear Warriors!
Though we are living today in a world of theological slop, it’s time to start clarifying and being pro-active with what’s worked for the church in the past. Prayer and fasting are the starting and intermittent points; while the Restrainer in us wants to come out of Lockdown and start Restraining, with You as His hands!
Three months before she died, I spoke with the granddaughter of Louis Riel. She was in a physician’s waiting room and we struck up a good conversation. After taking in history privileged only to her family, I asked, “What was the main reason Louis Riel lost?” “Oh, that’s easy to answer,” she said. “He said over and over that if only he’d had more people, he could have easily won!”
Think about this on the practical level. One way for Christians to successfully defy and resist for ultimate victory, is to grow the Church through one-on-one evangelization. That is where it’s at. Of course, “One with God is a Majority.” And an endless number of new Christians have to be taught this!
On your mark, get set, go! Better to evangelize now before you can only do it in a FEMA camp or privatized prison! Better to do it now before the young go off to war! Better to do it now before proselytizing is an imprisoning offense by the Marxist Luciferic State. Let’s learn from history including two thousands years of Christianity and Louis Real!
