To believe Christ’s cross to be a friend, as he himself is a friend, is also a special act of faith.
Persecution
Peggie C. Bohanon
God has not abdicated His throne. He will not forever tolerate man’s inhumanity to man. He sees. He knows, He understands–and He still reigns. Whatever has happened this day, whatever will happen tomorrow, He is still in control. Nothing escapes His watchful eye and He promises to hear the prayers of His children. Let us look to the Lord, Who IS our help and our refuge in the time of storm. And while we pray for those who sorrow, let us also pray for those who hate, may God save their never-dying souls.
Antonin Scalia
God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools…and He has not been disappointed….If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.
Brother Yun
We never pray against our government or call down curses on them. Instead, we have learned that God is in control both of our own lives and the government we live under. God has used China’s government for His own purposes, molding and shaping His children as He sees fit. Instead of focusing our prayers against any political system, we pray that regardless of what happens to us, we will be pleasing to God.
Brother Yun is a Chinese Christian who has been severely persecuted for his faith.
Richard Wurmbrand
There was once a fiddler who played so beautifully that everybody danced. A deaf man who could not hear the music considered them all insane. Those who are with Jesus in suffering hear this music to which other men are deaf. They dance and do not care if they are considered insane.
Warren Wiersbe
If you take care of yourself and walk with integrity, you may be confident that God will deal with those who sin against you. Above all, don’t give birth to sin yourself; rather, pray for those who persecute you. God will one day turn your persecution into praise.
Sadhu Sundar Singh
We have no right to be silent; even when confession of Christ leads to persecution and suffering we must bear witness.
R. T. Kendall
God often uses something external to bring the Church to her knees. We ought to see it as the kindness of God when he allows trouble to drive us to prayer.
Sadhu Sundar Singh
Jesus’ presence always brought astonishing peace to me no matter how bad the situations I was in. Whenever I was in a prison, he was always there for me. He transformed the jail into a heaven and the burdens became blessings. There are many Christians who do not feel His glorious presence as something real. Because for them Jesus only occurs in their minds and not in their hearts. Only when someone surrenders his heart to Jesus can he find Him.
C. S. Lewis
We know that one school of psychology already regards religion as a neurosis. When this particular neurosis becomes inconvenient to the government, what is to hinder the government from proceeding to ‘cure’ It? Such ‘cure’ will, of course, be compulsory; but under the humanitarian theory it will not be called by the shocking name of Persecution. No one will blame us for being Christians, no one will hate us, no one revile us. The new Nero will approach us with the silky manners of a doctor, and though all will be in fact {compulsory}, all will go on within the unemotional therapeutic sphere where words like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, or ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’ are never heard. And thus when the command is given, every prominent Christian in the land may vanish overnight into Institutions for the Treatment of the Ideologically Unsound, and it will rest with the expert gaolers to when (if ever) they are to emerge. But it will not be persecution. Even if the treatment is painful, even if it is life-long, even if if it is fatal, that will be only a regrettable accident, the intention was purely therapeutic.