I’m sharing a letter here that I sent today to the pastor of a solid Bible church where I went for nineteen years.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Today, as the Supreme Court reviews DOMA and PROP 8, I think of your message about 4 1\/2 years ago on persecution.\u00a0 You spoke of people you ministered to around the world who lived with severe, direct persecution and who lost loved ones.\u00a0 You made it very real, at least to me.<\/p>\n
You also said we did not have persecution in our country.\u00a0 Yes, we had a lot to be thankful for.\u00a0 But while you were speaking that Sunday morning, I was thinking of Jim Garlow and many others in California who were experiencing persecution first-hand, because they were publicly defending Biblical marriage (PROP 8).\u00a0 I cannot see God calling Christian leaders to anything less.<\/p>\n
I do not know what is happening next, but one of my greatest concerns is that pastors are not preparing Christians for persecution.\u00a0 If we are not wrestling with the issues that burdened Bonhoeffer, we may have people asking us questions we can’t answer.<\/p>\n
If you will, turn to\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 AWordforThought.com\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and read 3-9-13,\u00a0\u00a0 then do a search for all articles on\u00a0\u00a0 “persecution.”\u00a0\u00a0 I just re-read them myself, for the first time.<\/p>\n
In case you get involved reading, there are two articles on the\u00a0\u00a0 “remnant.”<\/p>\n
It is my goal that something I say or write may save one or two of the remnant from falling away when persecution comes.<\/p>\n
God Bless You.\u00a0 Stand.<\/p>\n
Larry Michalk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m sharing a letter here that I sent today to the pastor of a solid Bible church where I went for nineteen years. Today, as the Supreme Court reviews DOMA and PROP 8, I think of your message about 4 1\/2 years ago on persecution.\u00a0 You spoke of people you ministered to around the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2,3,7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational","category-faith_based","category-family","category-inspire_lifter","category-political-cultural"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1894,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions\/1894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}