Sermon from June 27, 2004

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau,
Mock on, mock on; 'tis all in vain;
You throw the sand against the wind
And the wind blows it back again.

And every sand becomes a gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back, they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel's paths they shine.

The atoms of Democritus
And Newton's particles of light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.

I am sure that William Blake would have said that the mockery of Voltaire and Rousseau had a more vicious counterpart in the Caligulas and Stalins of history, who tried to eradicate Christiand faith by sheer force. Blake's poem is a reminder that tyrants too had the sands blown back in their faces. Their most powerful weapon, death, serves as the most effective instrument of Christianity's power to persuade and advance.

Jesus put it this way: "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." I think it was Tertullian who said, "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church." The Church is never more powerful than when it is weak. It never inflicts more damage on its enemies than when it is utterly non-violent.

The letter of Hebrews says in chapter 11, verses 36-38, Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated - the world was not worthy of them.

It is appropriate today that we should pay homage to these heroes of sacrificial faith by recognizing some of them by name. When I was a student at Dallas Seminary, my professor of missions, Dr. George Peters, shocked us one day when he said, "More Christians have died for their faith in the 20th century than in all the preceding centuries combined." Let's walk down one corridor in this hall of fame and see whom we meet.

The Martyrs' Hall of Fame
Last Sunday, we ended with China. Let's begin with China today. We will never know in this world the sufferings of the Chinese Church. One of the most admired Chinese Christian leaders was Wang Mingdao. He did not die for his faith. In fact, he lived into his early 90s. But he suffered terribly. Communists arrested and jailed him several times. The last time they arrested him was April 29, 1958, along with his wife.

"He spent the next twenty-two years in prison, with the Cultural Revolution years (1966-1971) being especially brutal. At one point he was handcuffed for four months at a stretch and subjected to daily beatings and humilation.

"His wife Debra was released in 1975 and was allowed to visit him a few times. He himself was only finally realeased in January 1980" (Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, 56).

Allen Yuan, another unregistered house church patriarch, was arrested ten days before Wang Mingdao. "Some thirteen of Yuan's twenty-one years in prison were spent in a labor camp in China's chilly northeastern province of Heilongjiang, not far from the Russian border. It was here that Yuan encouraged himself during prisoners' 'smoking breaks' by walking back and forth in the camp compound singing 'The Old Rugged Cross.' ...

"Yuan ... was subjected to torture in prison, especially during the Cultural Revolution. Yuan was consigned to a windowless cell uninterruptedly for six months, his belts and buttons removed in case he tried to commit suicide" (ibid, 60).

Next, let's turn to India. Graham and Cladys Staines were Australian missionaries working "anonymously for decades among leprosy victims in the state of Orissa" (This and the following quotes about Indian come from CT, May, 2004, 34-35). Five years ago, Graham Staines and his two young sons were traveling, and they spent the night in their jeep in the village of Manoharpur. "An anti-Christian mob set upon Graham's jeep while he and his two young songs (Philip, 10, and Timothy, 8) were sleeping in it, parked outside a church. The mob doused the car with fuel and set it on fire. Graham and his sons perished in the flames.

Tim Stafford, a senior writer for Christianity Today, recently heard his widow, Gladys, speak to an Assemblies of God training institution in India. She recalled "events leading up to her husband's murder. Anti-Christian riots in the state of Gujarat burned dozens of churches just weeks before. 'I said, a little blase, "Well, Christians also need to forgive." I little thought that, ten days later, I would need to do so.'

"'We have to forgive,' she says. 'Jesus taught us to forgive.'"

Ivan Satyavrata, the president of Southern Asia Bible College said this about Mrs. Staines' response to the murders of her husband and sons. "'Christians were looked at as people who made tall claims about Christ ... There were thousands of sermons preached, thousands of rupees invested. But forgive was the shortest, most eloquent, most powerful sermon India has ever heard. It has done something for the church that our sister, through her pain, through her tears, did what Jesus would do. I don't think it is an accident that after that event, we have seen unprecedented numbers of people turning to Christ.'"

C. B. Elijah (not his real name) is a pastor in India. He has a "small office above a car repair shop - an unprepossessing setup for a man who runs two large independent city churches, while overseeing 40 full-time pastors in outlying churchees." How doees he think about the persecution of Christians in India? In his own words:

"'I feel the persecution is exaggerated ... A few pastors get beaten up, mainly in the coastal belt of our state ... I was beaten up a year ago, and I am still here.'

"In fact, his beating put him in the hospital for several days. He deals with violent episodes regularly. Just last week a church prayer meeting was disrupted by a group that wanted to put up an image of the god Ram, and tried to put bindis (colored dots) on people's foreheads. 'We are not allowed to meet in a few places ... Still, people are responding, and the church is growing. I say to my pastors, "If you are afraid, you should go do something else"'"

And then there is Vietnam. "The communist campaign against Vietnam's Monotagnard, Hmong and unregistered house churches shows no sign of ending. These vibrant Christian movements are calling new attention to Vietnam's effort to repress them. Hmong believers, who number at least 250,000, are showing researchers countless documents spelling out the official campaign against their people. Hmong churches blossomed in the late 1980s as Hmong-language radio broadcasts reached their villages with the gospel. Persecution of Hmong leaders has been cruel. Dozens have spent years in substandard prisons. As of June, twelve church leaders remained in confinement. In the past five years, 14,000 Hmong seeking greater freedom have fled south to Vietnam's Central Highlands" (This and the following quote come from CT, September 9, 2002).

As a case in point: "in the Tan Uyen district of Binh Phuoc province, a public security policeman named Ly confiscated the motorbikes of two Christians attending a house church. They were told they would get their motorbikes back only when they recanted their faith."

In August, 2002, in Colombia, "unidentified assassins from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) ambushed and killed Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor Adelmo Cabrera Polanco and his adult son, Luis Carlos, in the town of Puerto Rico in the area of San Vicente del Caguán.

"Since 1988, civil unrest in this South American nation of 38 million has claimed the lives of at least 70 evangelical ministers and 29 Roman Catholic priests" (CT, January, 2003, 31).

Gary and Bonnie Witherall met at Moody Bible Institute. "On November 21 (2002), a lone gunman shot ... Bonnie ... 31, three times in the head ... at a prenatal clinic where she worked in the mostly Muslim sourthern Lebanon city of Sidon" (CT, January 2003, 26).

"Three girls died during a Christmas day attack on a small church in eastern Pakistan. Witnesses said two assailants dressed in burqas ... threw a bomb into the middle of worshipers at a Christmas Day service ... The attack injured 15 of the 40 Pakistanis inside the church in Chianwala, northwest of Lahore" (CT, February, 2003, 28).

"In late 1999 and early 2000, 21 Christians in and around the village of al-Kosheh were murdered during Muslim rioting. Ninety-five Muslims ... were eventually brought up on charges of murder and destroying 65 homes, kiosks, and shops ..." and later exonerated by an Egyptian court (CT, May, 2003, 28).

"Police in Eritrea are continuing a countrywide crackdown against evangelicals. Authorities arrested 12 mostly young, independent Christians meeting for worship in a private house in the capital of Asmara on September 7 (2003). All are members of Dubre Bethel Church in Asmara. After holding the 12 for nine days at Asmara's Police Station No. 5, the police chief demanded that they deny their faith to be released. When the six women and six men refused, he ordered that their food rations be withheld (CT, November, 2003, 36).

"Four female Christian workers were brutalized in an attack on September 17 (2003), and unidentified motorcyclists burned down the Assembly of God church in Kotadeniyawa (Sri Lanka) on September 23 (2003) .... Buddhist leaders called for a ban on 'unethical conversions' at a convention of 1500 Buddhist monks in Sir Lanka's capital, Colombo, on September 23," 2003 (CT, December, 2003, 28).

"Al Qaeda bombed a foreign workers' compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on November 8, 2003 - killing seven people. That much everyone knows. What has been obscured in Saudi government statements and media coverage about the attack is that six of the victims were targeted because they were Christians.

"Paul Marshall, senior fellow at Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom, lays out the case in a Weekly Standard article .... 'The fact that the Saudi authorities did not reveal that this was largely a Lebanese Christian area, that they rapidly demolished the remains and stayed silent while the media misreported the identity of the victim, suggests a deliberate attempt to mask what is going on in the kingdom (CT, February, 2003, 24).

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Persecution of the Church in the 21st century is a global reality. Our brothers and sisters in Christ in much of the world are called to suffer persecution. We are called to suffer liberty. How do we make sense of this disparity? I offer you two responses.

First, our culture poses a profound question to the people of God. It is not a question we can answer with words only. We have to answer it with our lives over the next decade. Here is the question. Can we Christians be people of integrity in a world in which people are free to do anything they can get away with? The fire for Christians in North America is not persecution such as faces our brothers and sisters in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Peru and Colombia. I do not understand why it should be granted to us to believe in Christ but not suffer persecution for His sake.

It has been granted to us to suffer freedom. The fire for Christians in North America is staying true to Christ in the face of unparalleled personal freedoms and an unprincipled pursuit of pleasure. They allure us away from Christ and tempt us to an orgy of self-indulgence. Can we be people of integrity in this culture? That is the pressing question that faces the Church in our generation and that waits the answer of our lives.

Second, I'd like to reflect with you on the strangest parable in the Bible. Here is what Jesus said in Luke 16:1-9.

Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'

"The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg - I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.'

"So he called in each of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'

"'Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied.

"The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.'

"Then he asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?'

"'A thousand bushels of wheat,' he replied.

"He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.'

"The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the poeple of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use world wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings."