TOPIC: How to Be Faithful in Persecution

Faithful in Persecution. That is the topic we'll discuss today right here on the Christian Worldview radio program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news that all people can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host of the program, and our website is thechristianworldview.org. Well, thank you for joining us today as we talk about faithful in persecution. We're going to hear some excerpts from Pastor Vody Bockham's message at the Shepherds Conference and also discuss some current events related to this topic. Now, in the course of 250 years of American history, Christianity has gone from being revered and the informing worldview of our Constitution and culture to being cast aside now from at least public life. This devolution is occurring so rapidly now that Christians are openly persecuted for holding to orthodox biblical beliefs, particularly on the issue of marriage and morality.

For instance, to reject the lie that homosexuality and transgenderism are as unchangeable and as amoral as, let's say, skin color is to be considered an evil racist deserving of complete and utter expungement from mainstream society. Now, there are myriad examples of this from Christian wedding service providers who are sued and fined and lose their businesses to Christian-owned businesses like, let's say, Chick-fil-A who are denied building stores in certain places because of their biblical views to just regular Christians who feel like they have to keep silent about their beliefs or else. Now, the word persecution is a strong term.

The dictionary defines it as to pursue with harassing or oppressive treatment to annoy or trouble persistently. But I think it's an accurate way to describe what is happening to Christians in our country where freedom of religion stands atop our first principles. It's not being held as a first principle anymore. Granted, persecution of Christians in America is not even comparable to the physical torture, imprisonment, and death suffered by Christian brothers and sisters worldwide. But we are getting there, I think, where non-politically approved beliefs are considered hate crimes and deserving of jail time. So today on the Christian Real View, we're going to discuss how to be faithful in persecution in light of a sermon that Pastor Vody Bockham delivered at the Shepherd's Conference last month.

Now, before we get to some of those sound bites, I just picked one recent example of what I'm referring to when I talk about persecution, or maybe a lesser term is marginalization, like you can't play if you have these beliefs. There is a story on a website, I believe it's the Federalist Society website at Yale Law School, and the title of the column is, I Thought I Could Be a Christian and a Constitutionalist at Yale Law School, I Was Wrong. And this column was written by a man named Aaron Haviland. He's a student at Yale Law School.

He graduated from the US Naval Academy in the University of Cambridge, and he served in the Marine Corps. And he's a member of the school's Federalist Society chapter. The Federalist Society at Yale, according to the website, is committed to encouraging open and honest debate on the fundamental legal issues of our day.

We bring preeminent jurists, academics, and practitioners to campus to exposit conservative and libertarian ideas that are often underrepresented at Yale Law School. Okay, so here is this column. There are several paragraphs here, but I think it's important just to get a sense of this. And again, this isn't the unique case that the whole program is built on today. This is just an example that came up recently. There are many, many examples like this, change the circumstances a little bit.

And there are many, many examples of this. So he says this in his column. He's a third-year law student at Yale Law School.

He said, My friends and I sent out a school-wide email announcement about a guest speaker event for the upcoming week. A lawyer from Alliance Defending Freedom, ADF, the Christian legal group that has won numerous First Amendment cases at the Supreme Court, would be discussing the Masterpiece Cakeshop versus Colorado Civil Rights Commission. You remember that case with Jack Phillips, the cake shop owner, and two homosexuals came in and wanted to have a cake bake for their so-called homosexual wedding, and Jack Phillips refused to do that.

He didn't want to provide his services or participate in a ceremony, an event that would violate his Christian beliefs. And he ended up, I think, losing the case at first, but then it was overturned by the Supreme Court. They found that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was actually targeting him for his religious beliefs.

You can read more about that online. Anyway, given that ADF, Alliance Defending Freedom, has been smeared as a hate group by who? The Southern Poverty Law Center, and we'll get more into them today, wait to hear about them. We expected some controversy. But what we got was over the top, even by Yale standards. The first condemnation was from Outlaws, the law school's LGBTQ group.

It always comes from there. It always comes down to the homosexual transgender issue, almost always. They attacked the Federalist Society for inviting ADF to campus and called for a boycott of the event. Over the next 24 hours, almost every student group jumped onto the bandwagon and joined the boycott. Now boycotting is one thing. People are free to have their own opinions and not participate or service your business.

That's one thing. I wouldn't call that necessarily persecution per se. Now listen to this, how the higher education, graduate schools, so forth. Listen to how everything is based on identity group today. He goes on to say, the emails that we received during the boycott were a veritable alphabet soup of identity groups, including the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, the Black Law Students Association, the South Asian Law Students Association, the Latinx Law Students Association, the Muslim Law Students Association, the Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, and the Jewish Law Students Association.

I mean, does law really, does interpreting the law really depend on what the color of your skin is or what your ethnicity is? And then from this, from the Native American Law Students Association, they said ADF employees, again, Alliance Defending Freedom, were not welcome on their quote, ancestral lands. The Yale Law Women, the Yale Law Student Alliance for Reproductive Justice, and the Women of Color Collective joined in as did the American Constitution Society, the Yale Law Democrats, and the first generation professionals.

So basically, every group has this, no diversity of thought, no openness to having someone with, with different beliefs than theirs. It was a universal call to boycott this particular event. In addition to the boycott, some students said people who supported ADF's position should no longer be admitted to the law school.

In other words, if you support ADF because they, they defended Jack Phillips and the Masterpiece Cakeshop, if you support ADF's position, you should no longer be able to attend law school at Yale. One student emailed a list of the Federalist Society board members, which is publicly available, so students would know whom to quote unquote, thank, in other words, write critical emails to them for this event. The event took place two days later, around 30 people attended, 30 people.

The boycotters decorated the front door with rainbow posters, but mostly stuck to protests and support groups in other rooms. The one disruption occurred, occurred near the end of the event, when three students walked in, rifled through empty pizza boxes and left with a couple leftovers. On their way out, one of the protesters, protesters blew us a kiss and gave us the middle finger.

Nice folks. The amount of vitriol and cyberbullying that came their way brought a couple of my classmates to tears in the lead up to this event. Some didn't feel safe on campus.

Those of us in our third year of study continued to count down the days to graduation. I came to Yale Law School feeling optimistic and grateful for this opportunity. I knew that I would be in the intellectual minority, but I hoped that I could reasonably disagree with and learn from my peers. A lot of smart people come to this school, I thought to myself. Although we held different political beliefs, we probably shared a common passion for the rule of law.

I was wrong and now I am deeply disappointed. And then he goes on to talk about the Brett Kavanaugh hearing. Remember from last summer when Brett Kavanaugh was being confirmed to the Supreme Court and what a complete spectacle that was, where they brought up this woman Christine Blasey Ford and with no verification of anything, the accusations she's making against Kavanaugh, we believe her. But they were just going crazy apparently on the Yale campus. It says members of the first year class were routinely bullied by their peers. In one case, a student searched through the LinkedIn profile of a conservative classmate, saw the conservative had a connection to ADF and shared that information with the entire class.

Others then demanded a list of all law students who had connections to ADF. In other words, if you're connected in any way with anyone who believes, any organization who believes that marriage is as the Bible says it is to be between one man and one woman, or that you can't change your gender, you're just considered a racist. You have to understand from their perspective, they see that as being like against black people or against someone with an ethnic minority. It's the same in their mind. Gay is the new black. If you can just remember that, you understand how they think, what their worldview comes from.

You don't see any difference at all. I'm going to skip to the next article because there's there's more on this. So that was the event. And then a couple months later, look how the boycott and the pressure and the criticism, now it turns into outright persecution. And you're not going to be able to come to Yale Law School now.

This is from April 1st by the same writer Aaron Haviland. He says, Yale Law School yanks stipends from students who work for Christian firms. Yale has found a roundabout way to blacklist legal and nonprofit organizations like ADF that don't adhere to Yale's understanding of gender identity. So now it's not good enough at Yale to just, you know, protest the students jumping on board to criticize these Federalist Society students who wanted to bring in a speaker from ADF. Now, you're not going to be able to work for one of these organizations and attend Yale Law School.

You see the incremental persecution increase here? So he writes, several weeks ago, I wrote about the challenges of being a Christian and a conservative at Yale Law School. A few days ago, the law school decided to double down and prove my point. After the Yale Federalist Society invited an attorney from ADF, a prominent Christian legal group, to speak about the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, conservative students faced backlash. Outlaws, this law school's LGBTQ group, demanded that Yale Law School, quote, clarify its admissions policies for students who support ADF's positions. Well, there you go. It's a litmus test. You can only come to Yale if you believe what we do about marriage.

Additionally, outlaws insisted that students who work for religious or conservative public interest organizations such as ADF during their summers should not receive financial support from the law school. I mean, you talk about, now again, not being martyred and thrown in jail, but this is the incremental approach to that. And it goes on to talk more about this. We're coming up against a break. We'll perhaps read more afterwards, and we'll get to the message by Vody Bachem on faithfulness in the midst of persecution. You're listening to the Christian Real View today as we talk about faithful and persecution. Much more coming up.

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I'm David Wheaton. Our website is thechristianworldview.org. In case you missed the program last week where we had Curtis Bowers on the producer of the award-winning agenda films, we announced that he's going to be the speaker at the Christian worldview speaker series event.

The next one's coming up on Friday, May 10th at 7 p.m central time at the University of Northwestern in Saint Paul, Minnesota. And we'd love to have you come to this. The Christian worldview speaker series, these are one-night events that feature a compelling speaker to present a message on a cutting-edge topic followed by a Q&A. So Curtis will speak, do a message on socialism. The topic is how socialism is impacting the country and the church, and he's going to answer questions like how is socialism being manifested in the country in the evangelical church, why has it become so popular, who is driving it, why it's antithetical to God's intent, how Christians should respond.

So he's going to speak for probably 45-50 minutes on that, and then we're going to have a 30-minute Q&A to follow, and that's going to be it. These are meant to be brief events, provide strong in-person biblical worldview content for attendees in a shorter format, as opposed to a more of an all-day conference or something. We're also going to stream it live on Facebook for those of you who are listening not in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, so you'll be able to watch live online at the Christian worldview Facebook site.

Again, that's Friday, May 10th, this year, 2019, 7 to 8 30 p.m central time at the University of Northwestern Saint Paul in the Nazareth great room. Now it holds 315 people. There's no registration, there's no cost, seating is available on a first-come basis. We had a phone call last night, someone coming from a long distance wondering what if he doesn't get in. We will talk to the school and see if they have some backup plans here in case it gets full.

315 is a lot, so I don't know if we're going to fill it up, but hopefully so, but I wouldn't worry too much about that, but we'll have another alternative if it does fill up. So we'd love to have you come to that event on Friday, May 10th. We have another one, by the way, scheduled later in the year, but we'll announce that in the coming weeks. That's going to be around the time of the Christian worldview golf and dinner event in mid-September.

It's actually Monday, September 16th this year, and the Christian worldview speaker series event is going to be the night before on Sunday night, September 15th. Okay, today in the program, we're talking about how to be faithful in persecution, and in the first segment, we read just one example, and this example could be repeated over and over and over again elsewhere. Just a recent example at Yale Law School, a student there, basically they invited the ADF, the Alliance for Defending Freedom on campus to do a talk. They do these kind of symposiums, these events from time to time, and it was just boycotted and criticized and, you know, roundly just basically castigated by all these different identity groups at Yale Law School and on campus. But then the follow-up to that I was just getting into at the end of the last segment was the point that that wasn't enough just to boycott it and to come in and give your middle finger to the group as you come in and put rainbow posters on the door, that wasn't enough.

Now we must punish you for holding to biblical beliefs about marriage, about morality, and so forth. It says, he goes on to write Aaron Haviland, he says, on March 25th, one month after the controversy, this isn't very long ago, maybe a couple weeks ago, Yale Law School announced via email that it was extending its non-discrimination policy to summer public interest fellowships, postgraduate public interest fellowships, and loan forgiveness for public interest careers. The school will no longer provide financial support for students and graduates who work at organizations that discriminate on the basis of quote-unquote, what issue is it going to be?

Of course, sexual orientation and gender identity and expression, unquote. I wonder if the geniuses at Yale ever think that they are discriminating against people who hold different views than they do. They never seem to think about that.

These are really smart people, actually. But somehow they don't have the self-awareness to think, boy, I'm discriminating against people who hold different views than I do. But the reason they think that's okay, if they ever even have the thought, is because again, to be in their mind, to be against same-sex quote-unquote marriage, to be against someone quote-unquote changing their gender, is to be like a slave holder.

That's one and the same in their mind. They have swallowed that lie straight from Satan. It goes on to say, Yale based this decision on a unanimous recommendation from the school's public interest committee. The committee explained, the logic of our broader recommendation is that Yale Law School does not and should not support discrimination against its own students, not the Christian students or the conservative students, the homosexual students or those who support that worldview. Obviously, the law school cannot prohibit a student from working for an employer who discriminates, but that is not a reason why Yale or Yale Law School does not support this. Yale Law School should bear any obligation to fund that work, particularly if the organization does not give equal employment opportunity to all of our students, unquote. The law school also thanked the LGBTQ group Outlaws for raising this issue. So when it comes to a a battle between religious freedom, freedom of thought and sexual rights, homosexual rights particularly, it seems now homosexual rights went out most all of the time.

I won't read the SRS article. They're both linked at our website, thechristianruleofyou.org, but I would really encourage you to do so. And in this particular case, Aaron Haviland is a Catholic student and he conserved himself to be a Christian. He's a constitutionalist, but that's not exactly the point of what his actual doctrinal beliefs are with regards to Catholicism versus evangelicalism.

The man holds to the belief marriage is to be between one man and one woman, and he holds to the belief that you cannot change your gender. And now that's outlawed, basically, and you won't receive support. That's what the road deal is going down.

If you work for an organization like ADF, well, you're not going to be able to get support from financial support from the school because you work for an organization that, quote unquote, discriminates. Okay, that's a form of persecution. And so when we were at the Shepherds Conference last month, the theme of the conference this year was faithfulness. And one of the reasons that was the theme is that it was honoring Pastor John MacArthur's. He's been at the church for 50 years.

This is his 50th year of being a pastor at Grace Community Church. And so every message there had to do with something regarding being faithful. You know, faithful, we're going to talk about Vodibakkuma's message, faithful and persecution. There's another one on faithfulness and evangelism, faithfulness in the church. So everything had to do with, you know, having, how do we be faithful over the long term with regard to a certain topic?

In the coming weeks, we're going to go over more of these messages. But for the purpose of the day, since we're talking about this, this creeping persecution that's going on in this country regarding Christians or people hold to biblical notions of marriage and morality, this message that Vodibakkum gave at the Shepherds Conference was very apt. Now, Vodi is the dean of the seminary at African Christian University.

And I think that's in, I can't remember what country that's in in Africa. But anyway, he's over in Africa. He was actually an American. He was formerly the pastor of preaching at Grace Family Baptist Church in Spring, Texas. He's also the author of numerous books and journals and magazine articles. So he gave a message that day on faithfulness in the midst of persecution from Second Timothy, chapter one. And this is where Paul is going to be martyred himself coming up. So he's been persecuted.

He's in jail in Rome. And he knows the end is near for him. So now he's writing this letter, sort of his last words to Timothy, who is a younger believer in the faith. And he's telling Timothy what he must do to carry on how to be faithful in the midst of persecution. So in Second Timothy one, he writes this starting in verse eight, he says, Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me, his prisoner. But join me with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with the holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immorality to light through the gospel, for which I, Paul, was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher. And he says, For this reason, because I've been a preacher of the gospel, I also suffer these things. I've been persecuted, but I am not ashamed. And here's this well-known verse, For I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he, God, is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. And he goes on to talk more to encourage Timothy to be faithful in the midst of persecution that will invariably come to the believer who walks with a strong fidelity to God and his word. Now he, before we get into the first sound bite, he says this, he says, When it comes to persecution, we're not talking, I'm going to go through some of the notes here, he's not talking about conditioning yourself for persecution or preparing beforehand.

You know, he said, Faithfulness in persecution comes upon us when we don't expect it. And I was thinking about that with regards to Jack Phillips, the owner of that cake shop in Colorado. And he was just going about his business. You look online, he's a small little storefront in Colorado and going about his business, baking cakes for people in Colorado. Baking cakes for people, you know, having weddings and so forth and other significant events. And all of a sudden, one day, in comes this homosexual couple and says, We'd like you to bake our cake for our wedding.

And all of a sudden, Jack Phillips has to think in his own mind, Hmm, do I want to use my artistic skills? And do I want to participate in a ceremony, an event that I believe to be sinful, that God would not honor? And he chose not to. And then the persecution began. When we return from this break, we'll get into more of Vodie Baucom's message, including several sound bites about how to be faithful in the midst of persecution. I'm David Wheaton, you're listening to the Christian Real View, and we're back after this. Environmental scaremongering is the favored tactic of the left to gain massive government control. After all, if you can convince people that we are imperiling our very existence by human caused climate change, there is no tax law or reordering of society that goes too far. Christians need to be fully informed of this nefarious climate change scheme. That is why we are offering two resources by Cal Beisner, founder of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, who brings a truthful biblical worldview to this issue. Climate Change in the Christian is an 80-minute DVD message, and The Cosmic Consequences of Christ Crosswork is a 15-page booklet. One or both are available for a donation of any amount to The Christian Worldview. To order, go to thechristianworldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Be sure to take advantage of two free resources that will keep you informed and sharpen your worldview. The first is The Christian Worldview Weekly Email, which comes to your inbox each Friday. It contains a preview of the upcoming radio program, along with need-to-read articles, featured resources, special events, and audio of the previous program. The second is The Christian Worldview Annual Print Letter, which is delivered to your mailbox in November. It contains a year-end letter from host David Wheaton and a listing of our store items, including DVDs, books, children's materials, and more. You can sign up for the weekly email and annual print letter by visiting thechristianworldview.org or calling 1-888-646-2233.

Your email and mailing address will never be shared, and you can unsubscribe at any time. Call 1-888-646-2233 or visit thechristianworldview.org. How to be faithful in persecution and be assured that it's going to come as our society becomes more and more secular, as our society further and further rejects God and His Word as it is doing, as the political world becomes more and more socialistic, there's always a coercion, a punishing of those with dissenting views, and we're seeing that all across society today. Of course, the left thinks, oh, you're crazy talk, you can still go to church, and there's still lots of Christians in this country, and blah, blah, blah. But if you dig below the surface just a little bit and keep your eyes open to some of the news stories coming out, almost weekly in this country or more, you'll know that there's a creeping persecution towards those who hold the biblical convictions and stands. And so we're going over a message that Vody Bachem gave at the Shepherds Conference 2019 about being faithful in the midst of persecution. And he talked about that you can't really condition yourself for persecution. It's hard to prepare beforehand because oftentimes it comes when we don't expect it. And so then he goes into this first soundbite and talks about persecution, how it's different than actual suffering.

Here's Vody Bachem. If you're like me, you hear the story of martyrs and you say to yourself, I don't know. And if you do say to yourself, if you hear the story of martyrs, you hear the story of men and women who've been burned at the stake and have done so faithfully and been torn apart by lions and did so bravely, and you stick your chest out and say, yeah, yeah, that's who I would be, then you probably wouldn't because that's pride and pride doesn't endure persecution. There's a difference between persecution and suffering. Make no mistake about it, persecution is a form of suffering, but everybody suffers. Everybody suffers. Life is suffering.

That's just a product of the fall. We suffer and we die. Persecution is different than just plain old suffering or just plain old death. Persecution is a suffering that we endure at the hands of our adversary, specifically because of his hatred of our Lord and master and savior, Jesus Christ. And what that means is, while suffering is something that is inevitable and every man will suffer, it's not so with persecution. Persecution can be avoided.

All you have to do is compromise. So, persecution is suffering with a choice, suffering with an option. It's suffering that you don't have to go through if you just stop preaching, if you just stop believing, or at least just say that you've stopped believing. If you just stop going that way and go this way, if you just stop pressing on this particular point, if you just stop raising this particular issue. Vody Baucom, everyone from the Shepherds Conference, he said that so well.

It's true. Persecution is suffering with a choice. You don't have to continue being persecuted. Just go along with the new ethic of our day. That two men can be married, two women can be married, people can change their gender, especially in those two issues. Just go along with those.

You probably won't have very much problem in life. Just keep your mouth shut, keep your head down, go forward. That's compromise. That's compromise. And for the believer, that's non-optional. Because let God be found true, though every man be found a liar. And that's what the people at Yale are, the only people at Yale who are not.

And that's what the people at Yale are in the Yale Law School. They're liars. They're believing a lie.

They may not know it. The message of the cross is foolishness to them. The pagans are acting like pagans again. They're blind to spiritual truth. And so that's why they do this. They're very willing to discriminate against people who hold Christian beliefs.

But they're not willing to discriminate against those who have homosexual beliefs. Basically what it comes down to. So he's saying here in this first soundbite that, don't be out there saying when you hear the story of a martyr that, you know, I can do this. You know, being a martyr, being persecuted is a draining, exhausting, breaking process.

It's very, very difficult. We should be saying, Lord, sustain me through this. And that's what he gets into next. But then he goes into the fact that Paul exhorts Timothy that you must preserve and proclaim the truth of the gospel above all else. You must endure the suffering that will inevitably result from preserving and proclaiming the truth of the gospel. He says, share with me in my suffering, join Christ in his suffering. He says the suffering of Christ on the cross, that we find our peace with him. He suffered on our behalf. Okay. But Christ also suffered for me when his body, the church, suffered through the centuries.

Okay. Then he gets into this next soundbite talking about the difference in perspective when we're facing persecution. How should we pray? What should we ask God for?

Here's Vody Bachem again from Shepherd's Conference. So we share in suffering for the gospel. How? By proper conditioning and girding up our loins. No. No. By the power of God.

This is so counterintuitive. Because the letter that I want to write to Timothy is a letter based on this reality. The power of God is what you need to get you away from persecution. God, persecution is coming my way. Show your power and deliver me from it.

No. Share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God. Not God saving you from persecution and suffering, but God sustaining you through persecution and suffering. The difference right there Vody Bachem says that we need to be sustained, pray for God to sustain you through the inevitable persecution and suffering that comes.

Very different perspective because if our master Christ suffered, why should we expect not to suffer, especially in our fallen world? We really shouldn't be surprised about like the example we gave from Yale today. This is what non-believers do. They may be geniuses. Yeah, they're very smart people. Okay, they're very smart people in a, in a worldly sense, but they have no spiritual wisdom inside of them.

So this is what they do. Let's not be too surprised. We can be upset about it. We can, we can, we know it's unjust and so forth, but probably shouldn't be too surprised about when the world treats believers in a bad way. And as I mentioned, leftists, those on the left will call you crazy for saying that Christianity is under attack in America. You're, you're, you're free to worship as you please.

Churches are everywhere. This is, this is crazy talk, what you're saying about persecution in this country. The first amendment says, Congress shall make no law. This is the first amendment, first freedoms.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. That that is the beginning of the first of the first amendment, the first line. And it goes on to talk about free freedom of speech, the press, the right to assemble and to petition the government. Of the first freedoms, the freedom of religion is the first one.

And that's the one that's being most attacked in this country. And shortly thereafter, this free freedom of speech. But the first amendment is not about a freedom just to worship. It's not just about being able to go to church on Sunday and worship. It's, it's about not establishing a state religion. Yes, but it's not about restricting the exercise of religion. There's a big difference between religion and worship. Worship is, you know, what you do when you go to church.

Religion is how you live your life all seven days a week. Okay, there's nothing in that first amendment about not being able to express or practice your faith in the public square. But we all know that if you are a born again, biblical, outspoken Christian, you'd have a very difficult time being nominated to any post.

We hear this in the questioning now in the judiciary committees and government. Now, if you hold to a biblical view of marriage or morality, you're just just openly, you're not qualified for that job anymore. And again, you won't be persecuted if you go to a some weak church on Sunday and never open your mouth during the week and go along with a theological liberalism every day. You won't be if you want to not be persecuted.

Just just kind of go down that route. But that's a route that doesn't end in a way that's pleasing to God. I read a story this week about the pope. Apparently, he was over in Morocco. The story from the BBC says, and they said, assuming the translation is correct, here's what the pope said. The Pope Pope Francis told members of the small Catholic community in Morocco, which is a predominantly Muslim country, that the role of community members in the country is not to try to make their neighbors convert to Christianity, but to live in brotherhood with other religions.

That's according to the BBC. So that's a way to not get persecuted, too. Just just try to live in peace and don't say anything about like Christ is the only way or bring up biblical principles.

Just live, just focus mostly on just being have good relations with people around you. Now, at the same time, what I'm not saying is that you should go out looking to be persecuted. I mean, lots of times when the Christians were persecuted in the New Testament, see them fleeing persecution to go to seek freedom.

Yeah, that's there's nothing wrong with that at all. We shouldn't seek it. We shouldn't try to instigate it. But as we go about living our Christian lives, there are circumstances that invariably come up. They have come up in my life on several occasions where there is a cost for situations come up again. Like Vody said, they're unexpected.

They just come up. And we are faced with a choice to either just stay silent or go along with the worldly way or to take a stand for Christ. There's wisdom that needs to be exercised when we stand up and speak up for God's word. We're not trying to be martyrs. In other words, like the ISIS folks who think that they martyr themselves, they get 70 virgins or whatever they believe in heaven. They go to heaven for sure if they're martyred.

We don't believe that. We're not looking for martyrdom. We're looking to be faithful to Christ. And that means being also faithful in persecution.

OK, one more segment coming up. Some concluding thoughts and more sound bites by Vody Baucom. There's an abundance of resources available in Christian bookstores and online, but the sad reality is that many of them, even some of the most popular, do not lead to a sound and strong faith. A key aim of the Christian worldview is to identify and offer resources that are biblically faithful and deepen your walk with God. In our online store, we have a wide range of resources for all ages, adult and children's books and DVDs, Bibles and devotionals, unique gifts and more. So browse our store at thechristianworldview.org and find enriching resources for yourself, family, friends, small group or church. You can also order by calling our office toll free at 1-888-646-2233.

That's 1-888-646-2233. Or visit thechristianworldview.org. I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being, practically.

Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things, just mark when they're born. That's Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. We ought to never become indifferent to the slaughter of the innocents taking place in our country. This is why we are offering a DVD series entitled Life is Best that will equip you to stand for life and against this injustice. In this two DVD set are 13 episodes that address all the facets of abortion from the worldview battle to what you can do. For a limited time, you can order the Life is Best DVD series for a donation of any amount to the Christian worldview.

Normal retail is $49 plus shipping. Go to thechristianworldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. And welcome back to the Christian worldview radio program.

I'm David Wheaton. Our website is thechristianworldview.org. Just an encouragement to go there to send it for a free weekly email which keeps you connected with this ministry. You get audio of past programs.

You get the short takes. You get announcements for upcoming events like our Christian worldview speaker series event on Friday, May 10th here at the University of Northwestern in St. Paul with Curtis Bowers. I'll tell you more about that before the end of the program. I mentioned earlier that was get to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Some new developments came out about that organization recently. What a sham and fraud that organization is. Maybe we'll just link this article on the website because I don't have enough time to get to it but we'll link it there at thechristianworldview.org.

You can read it for yourself. Wheels Come Off, the Southern Poverty Law Center. This is the organization, the nonprofit that has produced this hate map. So any organization like American Family Radio or the American Family Association, others, Family Research Council, any organizations that hold to, oh, surprise, surprise again, natural, traditional, biblical marriage between one man and one woman, okay, and then the biblical definitions of morality, those are now hate groups and they put maps out there.

And then what happens is it gets repeated in the media. NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC will talk about an organization. This has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Well, read about them on our website and you'll find out what a fraud of an organization, a sham of an organization that is, the founder was let go this week, apparently, for sexual harassment, racial and gender discrimination that had circulated in in-house emails.

I'm not going to take time to read the whole thing but what a sham of fraud of that organization is. So back to concluding remarks here on being faithful in persecution. The first point was, or the second point is, when you, well, actually, we'll go back to the first point in case you didn't hear at the end of the last segment, you're going to be called crazy for saying Christianity is under attack in America. But the fact is, it's not crazy, it's happening.

We give examples of this very frequently in the news. You just keep your eyes open, you'll see them. And as Vody was saying, if you want to avoid persecution, just stay silent and go along with the beliefs of the day. However, point number two, if you think and live and speak biblically, you will find opposition wherever you go, whether it's at work, at school, in politics, wherever. Persecution goes part and parcel in this world, led by Satan, that hates God and his followers. So of course, of course, hold the biblical standards, people aren't going to like you who are unbelievers.

They just don't like that. John 15, here's what Christ said, If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you.

And it keeps on going. This is Jesus. Remember the word that I said to you. A slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, Jesus, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know the God who sent Me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not know about sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates Me hates My Father also. If I had not come and done among them the works which no one else has ever done, they would not have sinned. But now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well. But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their law. They hated Me without a clause.

It's a correlation that can't be broken. If you're a follower of Christ and he was persecuted, well, as one of his followers, you're probably going to be as well. Matthew 5, 10. Christ also, again, talking about persecution.

Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not who have avoided persecution, but who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

And that doesn't necessarily mean martyrdom. Persecution comes in many forms. He goes on to verse 10, blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.

Rejoice and be glad for your reward, and heaven is great. For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. So don't be shocked at the world that they call you crazy for thinking Christianity is under attack. They don't see any persecution here. They don't have the mind of Christ. They have no problem discriminating against Christian beliefs.

And if you want to get out from under that, just compromise. Number two, you will find persecution wherever you go. But point number three is God gives you the power to sustain you through persecution, even up to the point, through the point of death.

And so I want to close the program today by giving the final prayer of Vody Bachem at the Shepherds Conference, where he kind of summarizes what we should be thinking and living on persecution. God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God who spoke the world into existence.

God who sustains it by the power of his might. The God and Father of our Lord, Savior, Master, Redeemer and soon coming King, Jesus Christ. God, we bow before you as a humble and grateful people, recognizing that the task to which we have been called is far too great for us. And acknowledging our desperate need of your power to sustain us, grant us favor to be faithful to the task, even if that faithfulness leads us to persecution. Grant not that we might be equal to the task, but that Christ in us may be glorified as we face it. For we ask this not for ourselves, but we ask this because we love the God of the Gospel, because we love the Gospel of God. Grant by your grace that we might love it more than life itself.

Amen. What a beautiful way and biblical way of having a biblical perspective when it comes to persecution and how to be faithful in it. By the way, all the messages from the Shepherds Conference this year are on their website, shepherdsconference.org.

So you can hear this one and all the rest of them. We're going to be covering several of them in the coming weeks, because many of them are very good. Just before the program concludes today, again, just a reminder, if you didn't tune in last week when we announced that we're holding a Christian worldview speaker series event coming up on Friday, May 10th, 2019, 7 p.m. Central Time, 7 to 830 p.m. Central Time at the University of Northwestern St. Paul. If you can't come live, you can also watch live on Facebook. We'll be streaming it there if you're not from the Twin Cities area and can't make it over. The topic is going to be how socialism is impacting the country and the church. This is a highly relevant topic, especially in light of what's going on politically and also what's going on within the evangelical church in our country. The speaker is going to be Curtis Bowers.

You know him as the producer of the award-winning agenda films. There's no registration. There is no cost for the event. Seating is available on a first-come basis.

There's a max occupancy of 315 people, so there should be plenty of room. If there's not, we'll try to figure out something with the university to create a little more room, and it's going to be on a just a just a free will offering to come to the event to help support the cost and so forth of holding this Christian worldview speaker series event. Find out more on our website at thechristianworldview.org.

You know, we do live in a changing and challenging America. We're holding to biblical beliefs. We'll get you persecuted, but be encouraged, Christian. There's one thing you can always trust in and count on, and that is this, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, and He will sustain you through any persecution you might face. Until next weekend, everyone, think biblically and live accordingly. weekly one hour radio program that is furnished by the Overcomer Foundation and is supported by listeners and sponsors. Request one of our current resources with your donation of any amount. Go to thechristianworldview.org or call us toll free at 1-888-646-2233 or write to us at Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview. Until next time, think biblically and live accordingly.