PEARLS OF PAUL
PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCH
DR. JIM DIXON
NOVEMBER 14, 1999
2 CORINTHIANS 11:23-29
The United States standard railroad gauge is four feet, eight and a half inches. This of course means that four feet, eight and a half inches represents the average distance between rails on US Railroads. Most of you did not know that and you did not care. On the other hand, there are some people who do care, some people who care so much that they have sought to find out why. Why is it that the United States standard railroad gauge is four feet, eight and a half inches? Well, they have discovered that most of the early railroads in the United States were designed by British expatriates, and that in England, standard gauge is four feet, eight and a half inches for railroad track.
They researched it further and they found that the reason that the standard gauge in England for railroad track is four feet, eight and a half inches is because the pre-railroad tramways had a wheel spacing of four feet, eight and a half inches. They had a wheel spacing of four feet, eight and a half inches because before the tramways the old English wagons and carriages had wheel spacings of four feet, eight and a half inches. And they had wheel spacings of four feet, eight and a half inches because the oldest roads in England had ruts four feet, eight and a half inches apart. So they designed the old wagons and the old carriages so they would fit in those old ruts.
But why did the oldest roads in England have ruts four feet, eight and a half inches apart? Well, they found that those oldest roads had been designed by the Roman Empire. Those oldest roads have been built by the Roman Empire and four feet, eight and a half inches represented the wheel spacing on the Roman war chariots. And the Roman war chariots had a wheel spacing of four feet and a half inches because they determined that four feet, eight and a half inches was exactly the width of the two war horses that would pull the chariots.
So it all goes back to Rome. It all goes back to the Roman Empire. And the United States standard railroad gauge comes from the days of the ancient Roman empire. That should not surprise us. There’s a lot of things in this world that can be traced back to Rome, good things and bad things. And there’s one bad thing, one tragic thing, that can be traced back to the Roman Empire, and that is the persecution of the church of Jesus Christ. It all began in the Roman Empire. From Nero to Domitian, the emperors of Rome persecuted the church of Jesus Christ. And when you think of the catacombs, you think of Christian persecution. And when you think of the Colosseum or the Flavian amphitheater, you think at least in part of Christian persecution. And when you think of the Circus Maximus and the hippodromes that were built throughout the Roman Empire, you can’t help but think just a little bit of Christian persecution and all the Christians that were persecuted in those ancient arenas. When you think of the crosses that lined the Roman highways, filled with crucified Christians, you realize that the Roman Empire had turned the persecution of the church of Christ into an art form. They rolled Christians in tar and lit them on fire. They cut Christians in half. They beheaded Christians, they fed Christians to the lions, and their gladiators used Christians for target practice.
It all goes back to the Roman Empire. But of course, the persecution of the church of Jesus Christ did not cease with the rise of Constantine or the ascendancy of Christendom. The persecution of the church of Jesus Christ did not even cease with the fall of the Roman Empire. The persecution of the church of Jesus Christ has continued through the centuries and the millennia. And today, the persecution of the church of Jesus Christ continues unabated. Indeed, that persecution is accelerated in our time. In the Sudan, in the last 15 years, 1,900,000 people have been killed. That’s more than the numbers of people who have been killed in Rwanda and in Bosnia and Herzegovina combined over the same period of time. But you don’t hear much about the Sudan because the killings there have to do primarily with Christian persecution. And the American media just doesn’t know what to do with Christian persecution. The Sudan, the largest country in Africa, actually still practices crucifixion. And in the Sudan, Christians have been crucified. Christians are being tortured today. They’re being incarcerated. Christian women are being raped. Christian children are being sold into slavery, and some of that was portrayed on the screen for you this morning.
And yet, the Sudan is not the only nation persecuting Christians in this world, and it’s not the worst, according to Open Doors. The worst nation in terms of the persecution of Christians is Saudi Arabia. The second worst is Afghanistan. The third is the Sudan. The fourth is China. The fifth is Yemen, the sixth is Comoros, an Islamic island republic. The seventh is Iran, the eighth is Morocco. The ninth is Tunisia, the 10th is Libya. And yet there are many other nations, 77 additional nations, that are actively persecuting Christians today. In the video it said there are over 40 nations. The truth is there are 87 nations where we have documented persecutions of Christians taking place.
I have at home, as I was preparing my message this week, just a stack of articles, magazines, newspapers, and books. It’s hard to read some of it. You can’t read it without tearing up. And there’s some of it you wouldn’t even want to share. Some of it I did not want to share with you. It’s hard to imagine how this could be happening. It’s hard to believe that it is happening, and yet it is true. Michael Horowitz, the Hudson Institute, has called it a mass genocide of Christians. Rosenthal of the New York Times has called it the New Holocaust. The Congress of the United States has expressed outrage, but little is being done. And why? Why are Christians being so persecuted in so many nations? This morning, I want us to examine the persecutors. I want us to examine three attributes of the persecutors, and as we examine these three attributes we might understand why it is that so many Christian brothers and sisters are being so tortured.
The first attribute of persecutors is this: they do not believe in religious freedom. The persecutors of the church of Jesus Christ, they do not believe in civil liberties. Just recently in China, in the province of Shanxi, near the region of Sian, in a house church there, five pastors—three men and two women—came to visit a small congregation of 26 people. And together they met and they began to pray and they began to sing. Nine police officers interrupted their worship service and they took the three male pastors and they stripped them from the waist down and they began to beat them. Then they told the 26 members of the church that they either had to come and beat these three pastors or they themselves would be beaten. Some of the members of the church came and began to beat the three pastors. Others refused, and they were themselves beat. Then these nine police officers took the two women pastors and stripped them and raped them. Then the five pastors and the members of the church who had defied the police officers were all put in a single room for eight days.
And why? Why? Because these Christians had committed civil disobedience. They had committed civil disobedience. You see, their church in that province of Shanxi was not registered with the Chinese government. The program in the Chinese government that registers churches is called the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. That’s the program in the communist government in China that registers churches. But most Christians in China and most churches in China don’t want to be registered with the government because if you are registered with the government and you become part of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, then you must sign documents acknowledging that the government has authority over the church. And you must agree that the government has the right to place government officials on the staff of your church. And you must agree that you will leave the Bibles at the church and will not have Bible studies away from the church. And you also must agree that you will not share your faith in Christ with other people.
You see, for most Christians, that’s just unacceptable because Jesus said, “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” And so these Christians commit civil disobedience. They do not register with the government, and they share their faith publicly. And they pay the price. They pay the price because in the communist government in China there is no belief in religious freedom or in what we would call civil liberties. Of course, this is not only true in communist nations. This is often true in Islamic nations. And there are many nations in this world where the governments are constitutionally Islamic, other nations where the governments are functionally Islamic.
In those nations, there is no religious freedom except for Muslims. Only Muslims have religious freedom, only Muslims have freedom of speech, and only Muslims are allowed to share their faith with other people. Christians in those nations do not have religious freedom, and they do not have freedom of speech. And in many of those nations, they are not allowed to practice their faith. And in almost all of those nations, they are not allowed to share their faith. So they commit civil disobedience and they are therefore persecuted and their persecutors do not believe in religious liberty, and they do not believe in in civil liberties.
You may have noticed in Monday’s paper, the Denver Post and in the New York Times as well, a report on Pope John Paul II, who has just recently journeyed to India to New Delhi, where he had a conference with religious leaders in India. At this time in India, fundamentalistic Hindus are slaughtering Christians. There have been 150 episodes in the last two years, and Christians are being beaten and killed and incarcerated and some Christian women are being sexually violated by these persecutor.
Pope John Paul II has gone to India to express his outrage and to call for religious freedom. And he’s meeting with the religious leaders to ask them for religious freedom. But the newspapers tell us that his words are falling on deaf ears because the persecutor do not believe in religious freedom. And what we take for granted is denied Christians in other nations. And here in America, you know, we just expect that you might see somebody at a coffee house, at a restaurant, a Christian and an atheist talking with each other about what they believe. You might see a Buddhist and a new-ager sitting at another table talking about what they believe. And in our nation, in our culture, it’s part of the free marketplace of ideas that we believe in that people ought to be free to share what and why they believe what they believe. But in other nations that freedom is oftentimes not there. And the persecutors of the church of Jesus Christ do not believe in religious freedom.
The second quality of the persecutor of the church of Jesus Christ is that they demonize Christians. They demonize Christians. You see, they could not persecute Christians had they not first demonized them. It’s awfully hard to persecute somebody that you haven’t demonized. So, when you come to Matthew’s Gospel, the 12th chapter, or when you come to Mark’s gospel, the third chapter, or Luke’s gospel, the 11th chapter, in those chapters you read how Jesus in the region of Galilee was approached by the religious leaders. And we are told in each of those passages that they wanted to kill Him. So they demonized Him. They said that he had a demon. They said that Jesus Christ was an instrument of Satan. They said that He was evil and He was a doer of evil. And they had to say these things because they wanted to kill Him. And you can’t persecute people without first demonizing them.
What was true of Christ is true today of the people of Christ. They are being demonized. And so, what do the persecutors say about Christians? What do they say about Christians? Many of the Islamic countries, those who would persecute Christians, claim that Christians are greedy capitalists who rape the world of its natural resources and leave the third world nations in oppressed poverty. This is what a Christian is, a greedy capitalist who rapes the earth of its natural resources and oppresses the poor. Of course, this negative stereotype is not justified. The truth is that 75% of the Christians in the world today live in third world nations and are themselves poor. Three fourths of the Christians on the earth live in third world impoverished nations. But even those few Christians that live in America can not justifiably be stereotyped as greedy capitalists.
Of course, they also demonized Christians saying that Christians are morally debauched and morally depraved. They say this because Christianity is so often associated with America and its culture. And of course, 80% of the pornography in the world is produced in the United States of America then marketed in the other nations of the world. And of course, American television and American movies are broadcast and shown all over the world. And for these reasons, Christianity is sometimes associated with the lack of morality portrayed in TV and in the movies. And so, they demonize Christians by saying that Christians are sexually permissive and generally morally decadent. Of course, these stereotypes are false.
The truth is that even in America most Christians certainly would never buy, let alone produce, pornography. And the prosecutors of the church of Jesus Christ failed to point out that the television industry and the movie industry are generally hostile towards Christians and not governed and run by Christians. But you see, it’s easy in some of these other nations to perpetuate these false stereotypes and to stigmatize the word Christian, to demonize the word Christian.
Of course, Christians sometimes are their own worst enemies. And there have been times in the past when Christians have done horrible things. And it is true that some Muslims today can look back on the crusades and they can have righteous indignation. And some Jewish people today can look back on the Inquisition and that period of history and they can have righteous indignation because there have been many times in history when Christians have made mistakes.
But most Christians love Jesus Christ and love people. The persecutors of Christians seek to demonize them. Missiologists struggling with this have are beginning to suggest that perhaps the label Christians should be discarded and some missiologists in their evangelism strategies in other countries are actually no longer referring to themselves as Christians, but simply as followers of Jesus. But you see, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what we call ourselves. The persecutors are still going to demonize us. Jesus said, “You will be hated by all nations for my namesake.” Jesus said, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” Jesus said, “In the world, you will have tribulation.” So what do we know about the persecutors of the church of Jesus Christ? First of all, they do not believe in civil liberties. They do not believe in freedom of religion. And secondly, they demonize Christians.
Thirdly, and finally, the persecutors of the church of Jesus Christ generally hate the light of the gospel. They hate the light of the gospel. Now, Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” Before Jesus left this earth, He said to those who loved Him and those who believed in Him, “You are the light of the world.” Jesus said, “This is the testimony, that light has come into the world and mankind has loved the darkness rather than the light.” Jesus said, “If they hated Me, they will hate you.”
There are some who hate the light of the gospel theologically. They hate the theological light of the gospel because the gospel reveals the truth that we are all sinners. We’re all sinners, and we need a savior. This light, this message, this truth, is antithetical to the teachings of the religions of the world. The religions of the world tell you that you can save yourself. They really do. All of the major religions of the world tell you that you can save yourself if your good karma just exceeds your bad karma, if your good works exceeds your bad works. God’s up there keeping a tally. And if you just do good enough, you can save yourself. Or they tell you, “If you just follow the rules of our religion, you can save yourself.”
That teaching is found in Judaism and that teaching is found in Islam and in Buddhism and in Hinduism and in Taoism. It’s found in the Koran, it’s found in the Vedas and the Gita, and it’s found in the Tripitika. But it’s not true. You can’t save yourself. So here comes the truth of the gospel. Here comes the light of the gospel. You can’t save yourself. You need a savior. We’re all sinners and we need a savior. Some people hate that truth. They hate that truth. That’s true in nations all over the world. And it’s true right here in the USA. Some people hate that truth. And of course, in America, in our culture, in this day of postmodernism and syncretism and religious pluralism, there’s a lot of people who hate the exclusivity of Christianity and the claims of Christ because Jesus said, I” am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. No one comes to the Father but by Me.”
That’s not politically correct. Jesus should have said, “I am a way, I am a truth.” He shouldn’t have said, “I am THE way and I am THE truth.” That’s exclusivity and in the eyes of our culture, it’s arrogant. But you see, it’s true. Jesus is the way. No one comes to the Father but by Him. That is light. And some people prefer the darkness to the light.
Of course, we live in a culture here where there’s subtle persecution of the church of Jesus Christ. And some people hate the moral light of the gospel. Is that not true in our culture? Some people hate the moral light of the gospel. There’s a lot of people in America who want spirituality, but they want no moral authority in their life. That’s why they turn to the eastern religions and a lot of the new age stuff, because they want the veneer of spirituality but they don’t want any moral authority in their life.
They hate the moral light of the gospel. We live in a culture like that. This last Saturday, Barb and I went down to the Broadmoor where we were suffering for Jesus. They had a special down there, $99 a room—called it “$99 in ‘99.” So we went down there, and Saturday afternoon Barb wanted us to go and have high tea in the south tower. And we did that, and we had apricot tea and we had scones and little pastries and little tiny sandwiches. But Barb really loved it. Then later that night, Barb wanted us to go to the movie there at the Broadmoor. They have the one theater. And what was showing was Tea with Mussolini, which I would not have picked. But I was beginning to get teed off, you know. But we went to see Tea with Mussolini, and I must admit, it was a very well done movie. And it was kind of a period piece set during World War II in the nation of Italy in the city of Florence. And it focused on four women and a little boy. And the little boy was born out of wedlock. But as these four women rightfully said, there are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents. That’s true, because kids can’t help the manner of their birth. It was a beautiful scene in the movie where the little boy was taken by one of the women into this great hall where there were masterpieces of art.
And she said to the little boy, “When we create art, we become part of the divine plan.” There’s something noble about that thought. And it is true. God is the creator, and when we express our creative abilities sometimes that’s the image of God at work in and through us. And art can be noble, and yes, art can be divine; but is it not also true that art can be debauched? Because Satan gets his oars into everything, doesn’t he? And so just recently on the East Coast a museum portrayed as art an image of the virgin Mary buried in elephant dung. Because not all art is divine. See, some art comes from the other side. Satan has infiltrated all the arenas of our culture. Satan has infiltrated the arena of art, and he has infiltrated education. God is at work in education; so is Satan.
Satan has infiltrated the arena of politics. God is at work in politics; so is Satan. And Satan has infiltrated the arena of religion. God is at work in religion; so is Satan. And wherever Satan is at work, there is darkness and a hatred of the light, a hatred of the theological truth of the gospel, and a hatred of the moral truth of the gospel. He is greatly at work in our culture and in our nation, and indeed in this world, for the Bible says he is the prince of this world.
As Christians, we’ve been called to be in this world and not of it. And we’ve been called to serve Christ faithfully here. And we’ve been called to be light in the darkness, salt in the decay. And Christ has told us there’s going to be a price to pay. You’re going to be persecuted—maybe verbally, maybe subtly, maybe physically. Are you ready?
I want to conclude with a story. It’s a true story took place in the 15th century in a little village near Nuremberg in Germany. There was a family that was very poor. This family had 18 children and the father worked 18 hours a day to try to support this family. But he could not make enough money. And so, the family lived in abject poverty. Two of the children, two little boys, had a dream they shared. They wanted to become artists and they believed they had some gifting in the arts, but they knew they would never have the money to go to the academy in Nuremberg.
So, as they approached their teenage years, they made an agreement. These two little boys, as they talked in their bedroom at night, said, “One of us will go and work in the mines and we’ll make the money for the other one to go to the academy in Nuremberg.” They flipped a coin. The two boys’ names were Albert and Albrecht. Albert lost and he went into the mines and he worked so his brother could have the money to go to the academy. His brother went to the academy. Albrecht demonstrated amazing abilities in the arts. His etchings and his oil paintings were superior even to the work of his professors. He graduated from the academy and he began to make money and be successful in the arts. And he came back to his little village and he had a great dinner for his family. And he announced to his brother Albert that he would no longer have to work in the mines, that he now had the money to pay Albert’s way to go to the academy too.
But Albert began to cry. Tears rolled down his face and he held up his hands and every finger was broken because he had worked so long and hard in the mines so his brother could go to school. His fingers were broken and they were not properly healed, and he would never be an artist, not anymore. But he said he had some joy that he was able to help his brother, and he did help his brother. Albrecht became perhaps the greatest artist in the history of Germany, and his artwork today—his etchings and his oil paintings and his brush drawings, hundreds of them—are displayed in museums all over the world. And his name is Albrecht Durer. Many of you have heard of him. There’s a brush drawing that Albrecht Durer made in 1508. And you’ve all seen it, or most of you have. It’s called The Praying Hands, and it’s considered one of the greatest works of art. He created it for an altar in a church in Frankfurt, Germany, that people might be reminded to pray. The model he used for the hands was his brother Albert, his broken hands. And if you look at that brush drawing once more, you might notice that those fingers are pretty disformed.
But every time you look at that painting, you should be reminded of your need to pray for your broken brothers and sisters around the world, because this is the international day of prayer for the persecuted church. We need to pray every single day for our broken brothers and sisters on this earth. And I want you to make a covenant with me this morning as we close that you’ll pray from today until January 29th for your persecuted brothers and sisters around the world.
On January 29th, we have the privilege to have Dr. Paul Marshall here at our church. He’s going to be right here. Dr. Paul Marshall is internationally acclaimed. Dr. Paul Marshall has received the prestigious International Religious Liberty Award just this year. He is a senior fellow at the Freedom House, and he’s been an adjunct professor at the Free University of Amsterdam and at the Claremont Institutes and at Fuller Theological Seminary. He’s been professor of philosophy at two or three different eastern colleges and I can’t remember their names. He’s written 16 different books, including the classic Their Blood Cries Out, which describes the persecution of Christians globally. And he’s going to be here on January 29th at our church. And I want to encourage you to come and to mark that date on your calendar and to be here and from today till then to pray daily for your persecuted brothers and sisters around the world. When Dr. Marshall comes at that point, God can show us each one individually what he wants us to do. But until that day, would you join me in praying daily for our persecuted brothers and sisters all over the world? Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.