DAY 71

PERSECUTION

Deuteronomy 16, 17 & 18 and Mark 13:1-20

It is estimated that every five minutes a Christian dies for their faith – one such man faced the threat of execution in Iran this week and garnered United Nations attention. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/03/13/iran-denies-christian-pastor-faces-execution-for-offending-islam/executed in Iran this week.

Mark 13:1-20 is often seen as a text that talks about the end of the age: full of details about facing people who oppose you. A careful read is needed; we need to stay close to the text. Jesus has just been in the Temple and in fact his disciples just pointed out how wonderful the Temple was. Jesus’ response?

Before we get to that answer, let’s ask, “What does the Temple stand for?” Not, “What should it stand for?” but rather “What is it actually standing for?” The answer is that it stands opposed to the Kingdom of God. It stands against justice and peace. It stands not as a “Light to the World” but rather as a self-serving source of nationalistic pride.

Should it therefore be admired? What might happen to something that was built at God’s direction when it losses the mission? With this situation framed, let’s return to Jesus’ response: “There will not be one stone left upon another…” He sees into the future the desolation of the Temple. It happens in 70 AD and the historian Josephus provides gruesome details. As Vespasian comes to the throne in Rome, Jerusalem is put under siege by his stepson Titus. They are starved. Josephus reports they ate their children. They fought over food and Jew killed Jew. Titus enters Jerusalem, burns the Temple, destroys the city and crucifies thousands of Jews…not one stone left.

Is this passage a prediction of the end of the world? It certainly was an accurate prediction of what would happen in the disciples’ lifetime to the Temple and to Jerusalem. What is Jesus’ point?

Let’s go back to the opening scene and then the question. The disciples tell Jesus how wonderful the Temple is. Jesus tells them not one stone will be left. They ask “When?”

His answer, “Don’t be led astray”, then he describes how bad things will get, and speaks to them about how they should respond when faced with persecution.

I think the point of this chapter for us, for all who will find themselves in situations where powers oppose the message of the Kingdom of God, is that it will get pretty bad. It did in Jerusalem. It will where we are. Don’t panic, don’t be led astray. Don’t worry when you go to trial…all of these things are the “birth-pangs”. What do “birth-pangs” lead to? New life.

Jesus has come to give new life and to inaugurate a new Kingdom. We live in a time when the Kingdom of God, its message and its power are spreading, but it is far from complete. We also live amid strife and even persecution because there are powers and principalities that oppose this Gospel of Love.

The result is much of what we read about today. More Christians died in the 20^th century then in the total of the 19 prior centuries combined. Currently the estimate is that one Christian dies for their faith every 5 minutes. Pray for the persecuted Church.

I know most of us who are reading this will not face such grave dangers. Praise the Lord for that. The question is “Have you been silenced?” The pressures in the Western world, the need for caution, the fear of promoting violence, and in fact the unsophisticated rudeness by Christians has in many ways silenced us. Pray we find our voice. Pray our hands of love reach those who are lost. Pray for the world.