Tag History

The Tribulation of the Cross, Part 2

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When we read Matthew 24:13 – “But the one who endures to the end will be saved” – what do we think of?  I’m currently reading a book about the life of Queen Elizabeth I of England that focuses on her life before becoming Queen, and there is a lot that reminds me of Matthew 24:9-10, which says, “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.  And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.”  Elizabeth’s older sister Mary, a Catholic, pursued often violent methods to purge the country of Protestantism[1], as chronicled in the sensational book, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs[2], which soon became the 2nd most-read book in England after the Bible.  John Foxe listed story after story of Protestants being tortured, burned alive, and persecuted in other extreme ways that sometimes are what we think of reading Matthew 24:13.

But there is more to the context than that.  Matthew 24:11-12 say, “And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.  And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.”  This idea of love growing cold is immediately before “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”  In a martyrdom scenario, enduring is not the same as living, so enduring means something other than staying alive.  So, what does a Christian endure in order to be saved?

When Jesus was on the cross and said “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” in Luke 23:34 I believe He was modeling this endurance.  On the cross, the lawlessness of the world had increased to the point where God Himself was abandoned and killed by a populist mob, fueled by a conspiracy of religious and political leaders.  All of Christ’s followers were scattered like sheep without a shepherd, yet He continued to love.  Yet, instead of calling upon an army of angels and freeing Himself from the cross, He forgave.

Matthew quotes Jesus as saying that while lawlessness is increasing, “many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.”  Jesus said in Matthew 24:6 that “you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.”  In opposition to this, false prophets will tell us to be alarmed and they will tell us that there is so much lawlessness that we need to do something other than love God and love our neighbor.  Some of these prophets will claim to be the Christ (Matthew 24:5), but they will insist on a path other than that of the cross.  Perhaps using a Facebook post fed through a heartless algorithm, they will say “The time is coming when good people will have to do bad things to very bad people,” even though Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  (Matthew 5:44)

Repeating yesterday’s post, when I’m struggling to face the world as I see it, I ask about John 3:16, “Exactly which world did Jesus love enough to die for?”  The answer is this one.  Not just the part of it I get along with or that I’d pick to be in my Facebook feed if I had full control.  Sometimes bearing our cross is just being willing to love those Christ loved, even when we don’t want to, and even when they hate us as they hated Him.

I praise God that Christ loved me, because I too easily find people I’d really prefer to stay away from, but if Christ had taken that approach, maybe He would have never come down to earth to die for me.

Father, forgive us, for we do not know what we do.  We praise You that You endured to the end for our sake.

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” – Ephesians 4:32

[1] At other times and places, Protestants have persecuted Catholics, or each group has fought among themselves.  This is only one example among (sadly) many.
[2] I’m planning a history post for next March 20, the first publication date of this book in 1563.

The Death of Chairman Mao – History for September 9

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Photo by manos koutras on Unsplash

On this date in 1976, Mao Zedong, or Chairman Mao, founder of the communist People’s Republic of China, died at the age of 82.  Some look at Mao’s death as a positive turning point for Christianity in China, since under Mao China had expelled all Western Christian missionaries between 1949 and 1953.  However, while it is impossible to come up with precise numbers across a 3.7 million square mile country, Christians probably were about 1 percent of China’s population when Western missionaries were kicked out, but by the 1980s about 5 percent of the population went by Christ’s name.  The Christian population grew by ten times, while the overall population doubled.  How did this happen?

Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom, authors of the book “Clouds of Witnesses” say the key to this growth was “the resilience of the Chinese believers themselves…securely rooted in Chinese life before Mao.” [1]  In expelling missionaries, Mao was in part responding to “treaty ports” created at the end of the 1839-42 Opium War.  Through these ports foreign powers had extra territorial rights, allowing influences including missionaries to come in, but these ports also allowed opium to flow freely into China from Western countries.  Therefore, in the mind of many Chinese, Christianity became linked with both Western imperialism and opium addiction.  When Karl Marx said “religion is the opiate of the masses” he may have been thinking of this connection.  But native Chinese believers, sometimes planted by Europe-based evangelizing organizations like China Inland Mission, remained behind and spread resilient forms of Christianity that were attractive to the Chinese population.

John Sung
Several of these Chinese Christians are profiled by Noll and Nystrom, including John Sung who lived from 1901 to 1944, before Mao’s communist revolution.  Around Christmas 1926, Sung heard child evangelist Uldine Utley preach a sermon at Calvary Baptist Church in New York, near where he was attending Union Theological Seminary.  This sermon, along with other influences, countered the liberal Christianity he was being taught where the Bible was just “a collection of myths.”  He returned to China, determined to spread the gospel in the land of his birth with frenetic energy.  In a one-year period in 1931-2, Sung and a small group of missionaries “traveled over 50,000 miles, held 1,200 meetings, preached to more than 400,000 people in thirteen provinces, registered more than 18,000 ‘decisions’” for Christ.  Many of these new Christians formed traveling bands themselves.  Sung is considered the last great evangelist in China and Southeast Asia before Mao’s reign. 

Dora Yu
Even earlier, another driver of this resilient, Chinese Christianity was Dora Yu (1873-1931).  Dora’s ministry benefitted tremendously from a 1905 decision by Dowager Empress Cixi to replace China’s traditional Confucian civil service examinations with general public schools.  Under this system, mission-run schools became a valued option, and one of Dora’s early ministries was to train “Bible women” to not only educate women generally, but also to teach them the Bible, pray with them, and teach them to live by faith.  Mostly traveling by foot, in “1903, Dora Yu visited with 925 women and 211 children.”  Later, her ministry grew and she became famous for itinerant preaching, reaching many others who would carry on the Lord’s work.

Because of our proneness to look at
the bucket and forget the fountain,
God has frequently to change His
means of supply to keep
our eyes fixed on the source

Watchman Nee

Watchman Nee
In 1920, Nee Shu-Tsu would hear Dora Yu preach.  Later known as Watchman Nee, he “planted at least four hundred Christian churches over a thirty-year period of active ministry.”  He died in 1972 in a Communist prison after spending 20 years there.  Watchman Nee wrote that “Because of our proneness to look at the bucket and forget the fountain, God has frequently to change His means of supply to keep our eyes fixed on the source.”

Whether it is a European missionary, a child preacher in New York City, a Chinese man temporarily studying in New York City, or a Chinese woman walking miles through the countryside:

“How beautiful upon the mountains
            are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
            who publishes salvation,
            who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’” – Isaiah 52:7

As Jesus said in Matthew 16:18 – “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”  This rock is the gospel of the kingdom of God, and not even a brutal regime like that of Chairman Mao could prevail against it.

Soli Deo Gloria

[1] Noll, Mark A.; Nystrom, Carolyn.  Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia (2011).  This post is drawn from chapters 12 and 14.

The Fog God Hath Wrought – History for August 30

Todd R 2 Comments
Photo by Carsten Stalljohann on Unsplash

On March 5th, 1776, a sudden change in the weather led to a decisive victory for the American Revolutionary Army and an end to the British occupation of Boston (see my post on that date here).  On this date, August 30, in 1776, weather intervened again.  The American Revolution could have ended in bitter loss, but for “a peculiar providential occurrence” – Pea-soup fog.  “So very dense was the atmosphere,” remembered Benjamin Tallmadge, “that I could scarcely discern a man at six yards’ distance.”  For the book “What Ifs? Of American History”, historian David McCullough wrote a chapter describing the significance of these events.[1]

After a humiliating loss in Brooklyn (including more than 1,000 surrendered troops), George Washington found himself and his 9,000-man army cornered at the end of a peninsula by a British force numbering over 30,000, plus a vast navy.  Left with few options and overwhelming odds, George Washington quickly ordered the army to evacuate Brooklyn overnight by anything they could find or make that would float, across the East River to Manhattan.  The escape depended entirely on the element of surprise and the cover of darkness.  The scale and boldness of the escape was enormous – one Connecticut man recalled crossing the river 11 times that night, ferrying troops and equipment across.  The evacuation continued well into the morning, when the British might easily have seen what was happening, close in, and utterly destroy Washington’s army.

However, the escape remained concealed under a different kind of darkness, because “a heavy fog settled in over the whole of Brooklyn, concealing everything no less than had the night”[2]  By the time the fog cleared, the escape was complete, and the British, expecting a victorious day, were instead astonished by another overnight, weather-assisted, disappearing act by the American army.

McCullough says that without the fog: “Washington and half the Continental Army would have been in the bag, captured, and the American Revolution all but finished. Without Washington there almost certainly would have been no revolution.”  Because of the fog, “the entire force, at least nine thousand troops, possibly more, plus baggage, provisions, horses, field guns, everything but five heavy cannon that were too deep in the mud to budge, had been transported over the river in a single night with a makeshift emergency armada assembled in a matter of hours. Not a life was lost.”

This was not the first time, nor would it be the last time, that weather – or Providence – would play a key role in the American struggle to break away from British rule.  Therefore, let every people and nation seek the LORD this day, who can wield nature itself in favor of – or against – the very nations.

“Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain?
Or can the heavens give showers?
Are you not he, O LORD our God?
We set our hope on you,
for you do all these things.” – Jeremiah 14:22

[1] From “What the Fog Wrought.” David McCullough and Robert Cowley.  What Ifs? Of American History (2003).  P. 52-54.
[2] McCullough, David.  1776 (2005).  P. 191.

God Offers More Than Bread and Circuses

Todd R 3 Comments

Fans of the dystopian Hunger Games novels and movies know that the story takes place in a country called Panem.  There, the extravagantly wealthy Capitol district holds an annual, televised battle royale, The Hunger Games, where children from each of the 12 desperately poor districts fight to the death until there is only one remaining.  The purpose of these demented Games is to remind the people of the power of the Capitol, but also to provide entertainment.  But why is the country called Panem?

Panem is likely a reference to the Latin phrase “panem et circenses,” or “bread and circuses,” which “means to generate public approval, not by excellence in public service or public policy, but by diversion, distraction, or by satisfying the most immediate or base requirements of a populace, by offering a palliative: for example food (bread) or entertainment (circuses).”[1]  Under this way of thinking, for a government to remain in power it needs to provide the basic needs of its people.  For an especially cynical government, it would mean they need only provide just enough bread and just enough circuses to keep the population from overthrowing them.

The Colosseum in Rome – a site of ancient “circuses.” Photo by Federico Di Dio photography on Unsplash

In the case of The Hunger Games, the Capitol reminded the other districts that they could have no bread (panem) without the Capitol’s “benevolence,” and that the only entertainment (circuses) they get is to watch their children kill each other.  Talk about a government providing the very bare minimum!

The Hunger Games is obviously an extreme example, but fortunately, Christianity offers a better answer than just the bare minimum of “panem et circenses.”   What benefits does it offer?  Psalm 103 in the Bible begins in the first 2 verses with a call to:

“Bless the LORD, O my soul,
            and all that is within me,
            bless his holy name!
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
            and forget not all his benefits”

And what are these benefits?  Is it just more “bread and circuses”?  It is, as verses 3-5 tell us that the Lord is the one:

“who forgives all your iniquity,
            who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
            who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good
            so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”

This Psalm says He can take care of both our spiritual and physical maladies.  Jesus performed many miracles, so we “may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,”[2] solving our spiritual alienation from God and each other.  Likewise, the body’s diseases do not heal magically or by chance; they heal because God created us with that ability.  He is the Great Physician.[3]

Also, He is the One who can save us “from the pit” – from ourselves and the punishment that our sin deserves, replacing our banishment from God’s presence with “love and mercy.”  He is the One who has the perspective needed to define what is good, and as our Maker, knows what we need to thrive and be renewed.  He offers many benefits we cannot find anywhere else.

Not just the fictional Panem, but all the nations of the real world, have nothing to offer but varying degrees of bread and circuses, various diversions and distractions and palliatives.  No government in the world can provide the benefits God provides – those listed in Psalm 103 – and therefore only God offers what can truly satisfy.  Therefore,

“Bless the LORD, O my soul,
            and forget not all his benefits”

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
[2] Matthew 9:6, Mark 2:20, Luke 5:24
[3] Matthew 9:12, Mark 2:17, Luke 5:31