Prayer for The Persecuted Church

And look with me at verse 29, if you will.

Okay, now I want you all to just kind of look, and you guys can look around and see how many of you are standing up, if you would. This many people will die today for their faith in Jesus Christ during the four hours that we have church this morning from eight till noon during the two services. This many people are going to lose their lives today while we're here in a semi-warm or too hot, however you are, building. You guys can be seated, thank you.

This many people are going to lose their lives this morning while we're here having church, while we're holding church, while we're meeting together and praising God. Between 60 and 80 of our brothers and sisters are going to die. It's roughly about 20 Christians an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, are martyred around the world. They die for their faith, and countless more are tortured, suffer tremendously, are imprisoned and beaten because of their faith in Jesus Christ.

In 1996, 160,000 Christians were martyred, died for their faith, 160,000. More Christians have died as a result of their faith, because of their faith in Jesus Christ, in this century. We're just ready to turn over into a new century. So from 1900 until now, till 1997, more Christians have died in those 97 years than in all the previous 19 centuries combined.

There's been over 100 million believers who've given their lives because of their faith. Now what if, as we're going through the service this morning, what if some MJTF, multi-jurisdictional task force, the guys all dressed in black with the hoods and all, what if they come busting in, and they'd come around and they'd block all the exits so nobody could leave, and they'd bring the pastors and the elders up here on the stage, and they'd have their little saps, their little truncheons, and they'd begin to beat us until we were bloody. And then they would tell you that in order for you to be able to leave the room, you have to come up here, and they'll hand you the truncheon or the sap, and you have to beat us as well. And if you don't do that,

if you refuse to do that, you yourself will be beaten as we have been beaten. That's happening. It happened in China to a brother named Li Menping. He was a 22-year-old Chinese Christian evangelist, and he and four other evangelists were meeting in a house church in China. Now churches in China and Russia are registered, and Russia, the window of opportunity

is closing quickly in Russia. We've had 10 years to get the gospel in, and we've gotten it in quickly, but the window's closing,

were meeting in this one home church back in 1994, and just what I described to you happened. The security forces, it was called, came in to the services, into the house, and they proceeded to beat Mr. Li and his fellow evangelists until they were bloody, and then they forced the congregants to come up and to beat them before they would allow them to leave. They beat them so badly that they thought they were going to die right there in the house, and that would cause a major problem, so they let them go.

And Li Peng crawled and tried to walk several miles to his home, but he didn't make it. He died on the street on his way to his house. Now, such persecution like that's common in China. It's common. Amnesty International reports cases of Christian women being hung by their thumbs from wires and beaten with heavy rods, denied food and water, and shocked with electric prods.

This was in the Washington Times this year, an article in the Washington Times. Jack Jacoby, or Jeff Jacoby, who writes for the Boston Globe, wrote in 1996 in an article entitled Christian Suffering is on the Rise, quote, The Muslim population of Khanjajah, Pakistan, was incited in May 1994 by the local Muslim cleric to drive the 60 Christian families of the region from the land of the pure and to demolish their church. The Christian men were beaten and the women were stripped naked while three girls were kidnapped and raped. These Chinese Christians' homes, or these Pakistani Christians' homes were razed, torn to the ground, and their possessions looted or destroyed.

Pakistan's 1986 blasphemy law makes it a capital crime to insult the Prophet Muhammad by, quote, any imputation, any innuendo, or any insinuation, end quote. And the law has been used repeatedly to justify a reign of terror against Pakistani Christians. I mentioned the first service. I may sound political. It's not my intention to sound political, but I'm afraid we've gotten to the point

in our society where, where do you draw the line anymore? There is no line. The government is seeking to draw a line, but there is no line any further between what's moral and Christian and what is political. Several years ago, our current president, when an issue was made concerning character, said, character is not the issue. The ability to govern is the issue,

but character is not the issue. Well, I beg to differ. Character is the issue. Your moral base, your moral foundation establishes your character, determines how you will govern. You can't separate the two. And so, the line that is supposedly trying to be drawn between the political and the religious is a design of man. It's not intended by God. And so, we are coming to the point

where there needs to be a stand that is taken that oftentimes may look to the outside as political, but to those who are believers in Jesus Christ is simply a matter of faith. It's simply a matter of character. 52 days ago, the churches around the world were called together to pray, to begin to pray for their brothers and sisters who were being persecuted around the world. That was on September 28th.

And on that Sunday, we took time to gather and break down into small groups and to pray together for our brothers and sisters. Not just to hear stories, not just to hear these stories that I, and I have several, about our brothers and sisters around the world who are suffering as a result of their faith in Jesus Christ at this very minute. But we took time to pray together and to link our prayers with the prayers of thousands of other churches around the world. Tens of thousands of churches are praying together this morning for the church that's being persecuted around the world.

Now, some of you may be sitting there and you're feeling a little uneasy and you're feeling like, well, I came to hear a message and now we're going to have some prayer. And you're kind of starting to click off, in a click off mode. May I challenge you not to do that? May I exhort you not to do that? This morning is a morning designed by the Lord and I think you're going to find,

you're going to meet the Lord in a very blessed way if you hang in there with us through this. You see, it's really hard for the church in this country to understand what's going on in the rest of the world. It's very hard for us to get a glimpse of what the brothers and sisters are going through around the world. But you can be sure that it's not going to be long until we have an idea of what's going on.

This is an article from Gary Bauer from the Family Research Council and this is what's going on in Alabama for those that may not be keeping up too much with the news. Quote, Those looking for further evidence of the liberal judicial power grab underway in our country need look no further than Alabama. There, a federal judge, Ira Dement, and I mentioned his first service, Ira Dement, has issued a sweeping order eliminating virtually all voluntary religious speech in Alabama's schools. You better sit down, he writes, because you're not going to believe this.

Quote, Judge Dement's detailed dictate is draconian. It bars student-led prayer in almost any form, dictates that any student commitment speaker can make only a brief reference to God and cannot ask any audience member to join in, threatens students and school officials with disciplinary action if they violate the order, and specifically bars any prayer in a time of perceived national emergency, such as another challenger-style disaster or a U.S. military conflict. The final insult is a portion of the judge's order that establishes undercover school monitors who will roam the halls of the school system involved in the original lawsuit, the DeKalb County Schools, checking for violations.

Governor Bob James is calling the monitors secret police, and it's no exaggeration. Right now, national drama is being played out across Alabama without a national cast. Judge Dement's ruling should be and will be appealed. I recommend that each of you spread the word and take time to contact Governor Bob James, and that's another address I'm going to give you in a minute, so if you hang on to your pencil, I'm going to give you an address here in a minute.

To summarize, and maybe you haven't been aware, a lot of this will not make continued national press.

to pray for our country. They're doing that at the threat of not only expulsion, but possible prosecution, criminal prosecution. This is the same area in Alabama where just a while back, and again, you didn't see much of this in the secular news, a judge there was taking a stand refusing to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom, even though this federal judge has given an order that that be done. This judge is refusing to do so and is refusing to comply with the Ten Commandments and is refusing to comply with the Ten Commandments and is refusing to do so and Governor Fab James has stood by this judge and said he'll even send in the National Guard to protect him to keep those Ten Commandments from being taken down if necessary.

Now, it's a hotbed down there and the secular press is really playing it down and you will not see much of this in the secular news. I urge you, there are several Christian stations around the area. AFR is here local, KLVV in Ponca City, KTLI, and a couple others in Wichita that we can get. Please, pick up on what's going on, listen to the different news programs the Christian media is presenting, if you will, so you can keep up with what is happening.

Why Alabama? Why are they focusing on Alabama? Well, the Bible Belt is one of the last bastions in this country of Christian faith, of a collective Christianity, if you will. And I know we criticize, you know, denominationalism and old-time religion and they're all, you know, form, but no spirit form, but no form, but no consistency, but there's enough and the forces that be knows there's enough that it seeks to break the back of that consistency.

It seeks to break the back of what's happening here in the Bible Belt because if they can break that area, they believe the rest of it will collapse in on itself and there will be no stand that will be taken collectively. I don't know if you're even aware of what's going on around the country, but the rest of the country is going to hell

You don't want to have a full 50-foot clearance from the street, you know. I mean, that's where you start. It's 50 feet away from the house. So it's against the law. So we've got the leaf patrol. Now it's going to be on your case. No joke, man. You can be ticketed for having a leaf blower and using it within 50 feet of your house. It's absurd. It's ridiculous.

But watch the legislation move in that direction. We are not immune in this country from the kind of persecution that our brothers and sisters are receiving

that we'll even do it. It becomes a whole other kind of thing because I'm preoccupied with making my dollar, to make my house payment, to get my family the stuff that they want for Christmas. And if it's in the budget and I can send a few bucks to Amnesty International or persecuted brethren, well, it's an afterthought for us. We've studied Philippians and in Philippians 3, verse 10, is a verse that we stayed on for a while because it's a verse that I don't think we fully understand or comprehend.

It says in Philippians 3, 10, Paul says, I want to know Christ in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings. And I mentioned when we were there before that I think too often we want the first part of that and not the second. We want to know the blessing of the resurrection, the power of the resurrection. I want to know Christ in the power of His resurrection because it's the power of His resurrection that heals my diseases, that heals my area of economic difficulty, that heals my loneliness.

I want the power of the resurrection. I'm seeking the power and so we scamper off to places that talk about the power of God because we want the power of God to heal these different areas of our broken and downtrodden lives and we don't want the other half of that verse that says that I want a fellowship in the suffering, a fellowship in His sufferings, fellowship in the sharing in His sufferings. We don't want that. Suffering means pain.

I don't like pain. I want to stay away from pain. So do we really understand what we're praying, what Paul writes in that particular verse? I don't think so.

back to Jeremiah if you would, Jeremiah chapter 21. Jeremiah 21, if you want to take your Bible and just close it and open it in the middle you'll probably be in Isaiah. If you're in Isaiah go to the right. Jeremiah 21. Jeremiah 21, let's look at verse 11 together. Jeremiah 21, let's look at verse 11 together. Jeremiah 21, let's look at verse 11 together. God speaking

through Jeremiah says in verse 11, Moreover, say to the royal house of Judah, hear the word of the Lord. O house of David, this is what the Lord says. Administer justice every morning. Rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed. My wrath will break out and burn like a fire. My wrath will break out and burn like a fire. My wrath will