Bearing Witness In The Face Of The Beast
And the beast was allowed to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And he was given authority to rule over every tribe and people and language and nation. And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast. They are the ones whose names were not written in the Book of Life that belongs to the Lamb who was slaughtered before the world was made.
Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.
Anyone who is destined for prison will be taken to prison. Anyone destined to die by the sword will die by the sword. This means that God’s holy people must endure persecution patiently and remain faithful.
(Revelation 13:7-10 NLT-SE)
Dear children, the last hour is here. You have heard that the Antichrist is coming, and already many such antichrists have appeared. From this we know that the last hour has come.
(1 John 2:18 NLT-SE)
For the moment, at least, the federal government and ICE are backpedaling in Minnesota.
The pause in tyranny is because of the execution of Alex Pretti and the response to it.
That response has been in the form of public outcry…but even more so in an outbreak of people loving their neighbors.
They are caring for each other and their immigrant neighbors in practical ways…making sure people are fed and clothed and able to get to work.
This is what Christian resistance looks like, whether people are Christian or not…bearing witness to truth… even to the point of death… while loving their neighbors in the face of oppression.
Minneapolis is a picture of our future…the Antichrist is coming, and many such are among us now.
We may be called to bear witness the way that some in Minnesota have…by having our blood shed in peaceful protest while protecting the vulnerable.
We all are called to bear witness now by loving our neighbors…even the ones who may want to shed our blood.
“I have told you these things so that you won’t abandon your faith. For you will be expelled from the synagogues, and the time is coming when those who kill you will think they are doing a holy service for God. This is because they have never known the Father or me. Yes, I’m telling you these things now, so that when they happen, you will remember my warning. (John 16:1-4 NLT-SE)
Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand…
What really gets me is the silence. It’s not fear of speaking out, it’s the fear of speaking to one another.
The church is divided but wants to call themselves good Christians when we know we have not been. I don’t believe for a moment we do not truly hear the hatred, racism, ignorance, and vitriol in our words, spoken and unspoken.
We simply do not want to own up to it and find the friend or spouse or child next to us does not believe the same. With such a possibility, what can we possibly talk about, much less fellowship with one another?
This is what the need and drive to be right above all brings us to.
I’ve already sent this article to Christian friends. It is encouraging, but in a sad way. May God be with us all. One of m y son-in-laws is a Puerto Rican American architect and two of my four grand children look Hispanic and speak both Spanish and English. I never though I would worry about my loved ones being stopped and detained in my own country just because of the co!or of their skin. My father, a first generation Swedish American, was a WWII veteran who worked with Norad, NASA and the US Dept of Defense as a M.I.T. mathematician developing anti-ballistic defense systems for 45 years. Now his great-grandchildren are targeted by the country he spent his entire life defending. He passed on two years ago and I am grateful he didn’t live to see this dark day in the country he lived so much.
sobering that so many who think they are solidly in the Christian camp are in reality rock-solid anti-Christ in their core beliefs and reactions as well as their consistent support for systems contrary to the clear teachings of Christ and the Church.
Trump seems to grow more depraved each day. He “laments” the death of Renee Good because her parents were “fans” of his. He’s a moral idiot, but he seems to know instinctively how to elicit, appeal to, and exploit the worst in human beings, like some idiot savant Count Dracula. His is undiluted evil: undiluted by empathy, intelligence, or shame — in that sense, it is “pure” evil. Why should we not think he is the final antichrist? It is entirely possible.
As far as I’m concerned, Renee Good and Alex Pretti are white robed martyrs. I don’t care whether or not they professed Christ with their words or in their minds — they heard his call and obeyed, and that was their profession of Christ.
Kristi Noem is a member of a Foursquare church. Unlike a lot of other denoms, the FS church has made no statements on what’s been happening with ICE in Mpls.
Hmmm…might explain a few things… their founder was certainly very media savvy!
https://publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/the-silence-of-kristi-noems-church
bob1,
Having studied Sister Aimee for years…I think she’d roll over in her grave that her church was silent on these matters.
The other primary figure in that sect was Jack Hayford…who I think would have spoken against it as well.
Our Nation’s slide into Fascism is well on its way.