Archive for November, 2007
Destined for persecution (part 2)
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Costly Grace
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who was banned from preaching by the Gestapo. But in 1937 he had written in his classic work The Cost of Discipleship:
Suffering, then, is the badge of true discipleship… Luther reckoned suffering among the marks of the true church, and one of the memoranda drawn up in preparation for the Augsburg Confession similarly defines the church as the community of those “who are persecuted and martyred for the Gospel’s sake.”… Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called upon to suffer. In fact, it is a joy and a token of His grace.
It is perhaps not a surprise to discover that in 1945, after imprisonment in a series of concentration camps, he was hanged by the Nazis. Ten years later, the camp doctor wrote “In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”
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Destined for persecution
Posted by: | Comments[display_podcast]I need to lay my cards on the table right at the outset. As far as I know I have never been persecuted for being a Christian. Certainly there have been occasions where ‘friends’ have made fun of me. Undoubtedly there have been times when my Christian faith has caused me to be excluded from some activity or opportunity. But persecuted? Not yet.
And that, frankly, is quite remarkable. The Christian heritage that we have enjoyed in Britain for centuries has kept the vast majority of us shielded from the truth which most of the rest of the world knows all too well. The persecution of Christians is a normal state of affairs.
I say all this because there is an increasingly realisation that the privileges that we have enjoyed for so long are beginning to come to an end. Even in this country there have been recent occasions where Christians have lost their jobs simply for living out their Christian convictions. There have even been those arrested and prosecuted for doing what you and I believe the Bible commands us to do.
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Hearing God’s Voice Today
Posted by: | Comments[display_podcast]A recent interview (well, OK three weeks ago) with Greg Haslam raised again the issue of how God speaks. And given the current interest in the Christian blogosphere in discernment (mainly thanks to Tim), the interview is worth exploring again. I’ve held off commenting earlier, because I wanted to be able to provide a counterpoint example, and until now hadn’t found one. Then, this morning, came the latest Tyndale Bulletin, together with a link to Peter Williams’ interview by Justin Taylor back in August, that provided just what I was looking for.
Both men (Peter and Greg) were describing their change of direction in ministry, and how they had been guided. See if you can spot the difference:
God gave me over fifty personal prophecies that made it clear I would be going there, mostly from men who knew nothing about what was afoot… the Lord had told me that this was ‘For the sake of my wider kingdom purposes in London and beyond.’… I remain officially outside of that movement [New Frontiers], in line with all God told me to do five years ago.
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