Pathway to Victory

Speaker 1

Hey, podcast listeners, thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress.

And right now, your generous gift will have twice the impact, thanks to the Salt and Light Matching Challenge, active now through July 6th. To give a special matching challenge gift, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to study God's word with every day on this Bible teaching program on today's edition of Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 3

Admittedly, we're not suffering like Christians in the Middle East yet, but the groundwork is being laid for that to happen.

There is a moral revolution occurring in our country that is proceeding at warp speed. And with that moral revolution will come a cultural revulsion and rejection of Christians and what they believe.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. For over 2,000 years, Christians have faced religious persecution, but Jesus predicted that there would be a drastic increase in violence and oppression before his return. Could we be witnessing those signs?

Today, on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress examines the intense persecution Christians are facing around the world in light of biblical prophecy.

Now, here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message: Dr. Jeffress.

Speaker 2

Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Do you ever watch the evening news and feel as I do? Sometimes I look over at Amy and say, wow, those folks really don't like us, do they? Truth is, as Christians, we have a target on our backs.

Well, in a moment, I'm going to share a message that's called Christians in the Crosshairs, in which I give biblical direction on how to live under persecution. But first, I'm offering a creative means for counteracting the persecution you and I feel. Sometimes I can think of no better way to respond to our adversaries than by shining the bright light of the Gospel through Pathway to Victory.

Remember what Jesus said to us. He said, you are the light of the world. Let your light so shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Because of this statement, Pathway to Victory has activated the Salt and Light Matching Challenge. Friends of Pathway to Victory have set aside $1 million for this very purpose. And because of their generosity, every dollar you're able to give before the deadline on July 6th will be automatically matched and therefore doubled in size and impact.

Plus, as a way of saying thanks for your generous gift, I'm going to send a personal book to bless your family. It's called Shine. We'll give more pertinent details later in today's program, but right now, let's continue the message we began yesterday. Jesus warned Christians when he said, in this world, you will have tribulation, but take courage. I have overcome the world. I've titled today's message Christians in the Crosshairs.

Speaker 3

The Bible says, we know that in the beginning there was persecution against believers. We've seen that persecution right now is the norm around the world, the greatest level it's been in history. We also know that in the future there is going to be a worldwide persecution of Christians. There's no guarantee of exemption from persecution. There is every guarantee of it, and we need to be prepared for it.

Well, what should we be doing in order to prepare for this coming persecution? I want you to turn in your Bibles to First Peter, chapter four. Most scholars believe that Peter wrote this letter while Nero was the emperor of Rome. Christians were sporadically being targeted, but the worldwide ban had not yet begun. In many ways, the situation then mirrors our situation here in America. People aren't being beheaded yet in America for their faith. They're not going to prison yet. But things are starting to heat up. That's the direction things are going.

And so Peter has a strong word for us today as well. Look at verses 12 and 13. He says, "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you." I want you to look at that phrase. Don't be surprised, ladies and gentlemen. Being a Christian doesn't eliminate problems. In many ways, it creates new problems.

Speaker 2

You would never have if you weren't.

Speaker 3

A Christian, at least in the short term. Now, in the end, it all works out and Christ rewards us. But in the short time, there is a price to pay for being a Christian. Don't think of it as unusual. Look at 1 Peter, chapter 2. Turn back two chapters to verses 21 and 23. If we're following Christ, we're going to have the same experience that Christ experienced. And what was that experience? Look at verse 21, for you have been called for this purpose. What purpose? For suffering. Since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps. And who was this Christ? Look at verse 22. Who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth. That is, he suffered for no reason. He did nothing that merited his suffering. Jesus was treated unfairly. The call to be a Christian is the call to suffer for Christ.

In my book Countdown to the Apocalypse, I tell the true story of a man named Maithu, a father who lived in Indonesia. After jihad militiamen attacked his village in Indonesia, the Christians in that village escaped into the surrounding jungle. Methu, the father of this family, had led his family deep into the jungle to escape the jihadists. After two exhausting days of running in the jungle, Methu's family stopped to rest and pray. They knew real danger approached ever nearer the more time they spent to rest. But they were starving. The family had to eat. Methu's 8-year-old son was crying for food. So Methu went to find food for his family nearby. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the jihadists appeared. Methu saw them capture his 10-year-old daughter as she screamed out, "Father, help us! Father, help us!" But one of the Jihad troops threw a grenade at Methu, and he had to turn to escape. He tripped and fell down a ravine, becoming unconscious. When he awoke, he went back to the place where his family had been captured. His words are sufficient to sum up the scene he found. "To my horror, I discovered the bodies of my mother and mother-in-law. A few feet away, I found the body of my 8-year-old son Cristiano, lying in a pool of blood. I found their Bibles, three of them, near their bodies. All but one had been ripped into pieces and the pages scattered over their bodies." And then Maithu added, "I remembered the scripture verse that said if we become followers of Christ, we not only gain salvation and joy, but also the gift of suffering."

I think it's important for us in the West to hear those stories over and over again to remind us that suffering and persecution are real. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once remarked, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." Admittedly, we're not suffering like Christians in the Middle East yet, but the groundwork is being laid for that to happen in our own country. And let me tell you exactly how it is going to happen. Right now, there is a moral revolution occurring in our country that is proceeding at warp speed. And with that moral revolution will come a cultural revulsion and rejection of Christians and what they believe. And that is what we have happening right now. We are having a moral revolution that will lead to the marginalization and ultimately the criminalization of Christianity.

My friend Al Mohler has a three-stage process of how a moral revolution occurs in a culture. And I want you to write down these three stages. Stage one: what was condemned is now celebrated. Stage two: what was celebrated is now condemned. And stage three: those refusing to celebrate are condemned. Once that revolution is complete, what happens is the marginalization of Christians. The Germans did not take the Jews to the crematorium immediately. If they had tried to do that and exterminate the Jews immediately, the German people would have risen up and objected. No, they were too smart to do that. Instead, they first of all marginalized the Jews in the culture. They made the Jewish people objects of disdain, contempt, and hatred. "Well, they're different than we are. They're hurting our society." Only after they had marginalized the Jewish people were they able to take away their rights, even their right to live in the final solution. That is what is happening with Christianity right now. There is an effort to marginalize Christians. "Those Christians are backwards in their thinking. They're bigoted; they're not good for society." And once they have marginalized Christians, then it leads to the criminalization of Christians.

You see that especially in what is happening around this debate over homosexual marriage. I want you to think about that three-stage process I just gave you. First of all, it begins when what was condemned is now celebrated. Do you realize that homosexual marriage has not been with us for thousands of years or hundreds of years? It didn't even appear on the scene until 2001 in the Netherlands. That was the first place it was ever heard of. Until then, it was routinely condemned. This is a new phenomenon. Everybody understood that marriage was between a man and a woman. Not just evangelical Christians, but Jews and Muslims. Not only conservatives, but liberals. Do you realize up until a couple of years ago, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton opposed homosexual marriage? They said, "Oh no, that is between a man and a woman." And yet suddenly, overnight, what was condemned is now celebrated.

Step number two: what is being celebrated right now was once condemned. The idea that marriage is between a man and a woman—why, that idea is being condemned routinely. And you see that everywhere. Anybody who stands up for the belief that marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman is marginalized as a homophobe, bigot, and hate monger. You see that going on right now as state after state is trying to protect the religious freedoms of Christians by passing these religious freedom bills that simply say people ought to be able to hold onto the traditional view of marriage without being ostracized, without losing their businesses, without losing their livelihoods. And you know what's happening? Those bills are being defeated in state after state. Right now, there is a religious freedom bill here in Texas that is stuck in the Senate, and they won't vote it out of the Senate. I've written a letter to the Senate; I've written a letter to Congress. Others have as well. And they won't let it out. It's simply a bill that protects religious freedom.

And you know why it won't be voted out? You know why these bills are being defeated? If you read the Dallas Morning News this week, you know the reason. On the front page of the business section, there was a spokesman, the CEO of the Texas Business Association. He said, "We can't have these kinds of bills, religious freedom bills, because if we pass these bills, they will be seen as being anti-gay, and no businesses will move to our state. We can't have these kinds of bills because they hurt the bottom line." Let me say this as clearly as I can: the single greatest threat to Christian liberty in America today is not ISIS. It's the Chamber of Commerce. It is big business that worships the almighty dollar. They're the ones that are coming after Christians. And we've got to say enough is enough.

You know that argument, "It's bad for business"? That argument is 2,000 years old. The business leaders in the city of Ephesus, remember them? They rose up against the teaching of the apostles because it was hurting their business of making idols. You're seeing the same thing happen in our culture today. What was condemned is now celebrated. What was celebrated is now condemned. And the third stage: those refusing to celebrate are condemned. If you don't join in the celebration of homosexual marriage, you're a marked person. You're going to be condemned. You're going to have your business taken away from you. We saw that with the Sweet Cakes bakery in Oregon that was put out of business. Did they lose their lives? No. But they lost their livelihood because of their failure to celebrate a gay marriage. And that is going to happen more and more and more. And it's not going to be just against businesses; it's going to be against the church as well.

In just a few weeks, the Supreme Court is going to issue its decision on gay marriage, whether or not it's a constitutional right and becomes the law of the land. I think we ought to pray for these Supreme Court justices that they would listen to the voice of God on this matter. And maybe God will intervene. If I were predicting, I would say they are going to make gay marriage the law of the land in just a few weeks. The Supreme Court, they're not people of courage. They never have been. They don't try to set trends; they put their finger in the air and see which way society is going, and they follow those trends. And make no mistake about it, the trend is toward homosexual marriage. For the first time ever, the majority of Americans believe it should be the law of the land. So I think they're going to do it. And if they do it this year, if they don't do it this year, I think they will do it again next year. But it is going to happen.

Now listen, once gay marriage becomes a constitutional right, then anyone opposing gay marriage is going to be guilty of a civil rights violation, and you're going to see lawsuits like you can't believe coming against Christian businesses and individuals who refuse to join in the celebration of homosexual marriage. Don't buy into this idea, "Oh, if we just let them marry, they'll leave us alone." You know, we just got to give them their right. No, they're going to silence any opposition to what they are doing. And they are coming after us. They're coming after not only the Sweet Cakes bakery, but they're coming after churches like the First Baptist Church of Dallas as well. You know how I know that? A few weeks ago, before the Supreme Court heard their oral arguments on April 28th on this case, on the Sunday before that Tuesday, I was sitting here in church, and I got a note from Fox News. They said, "Could you send us a one-page analysis of what's coming up Tuesday and your thoughts about it?"

As I was thinking about that argument case, I remembered just, I don't know why I remembered it, but I remembered a Supreme Court case back in 1983 in which the Supreme Court said the IRS could revoke the tax-exempt status of a religious organization for engaging in discrimination. It was an 8:1 decision. It went on to say in that decision that the eradication of discrimination is so important that even if it tramples on individual rights, that's the more important interest to eradicate discrimination. Now, the religious organization happened to be Bob Jones University, and the kind of discrimination was racial discrimination. Now, I think we all agree there should not be racial discrimination. I think we would agree you ought to take away the tax-exempt status of somebody that engages in racial discrimination. But do you see what's happening here? If gay marriage suddenly becomes a constitutional right, if personal sexual behavior becomes equated with a person's race, it becomes a civil right, then anyone, including a church that refuses to celebrate, that refuses to perform homosexual marriages, they are going to face government sanctions.

The government has no choice but to come after churches that engage in this kind of discrimination. I hear people say, "Oh, well, the government will carve out a special regulation for churches." Do you really believe that? Do you believe the Supreme Court says, "Oh, it's okay for churches to discriminate"? It's not going to happen. They are coming after the tax exemption. So anyway, I sent all that to Fox. On Tuesday, they had the hearings, and Justice Alito was talking to the Obama representative, the solicitor general who was arguing for gay marriage. He said, "Now wait a minute, couldn't you end up coming after churches, religious organizations, if we make this ruling in favor of gay marriage?" He wouldn't answer the question. He dodged it. So Alito came back and he said, and he cited that same case I did in 1983, "Why? We took it away for racial discrimination. Why wouldn't we take it away for sexual discrimination?" Finally, he wouldn't let him go on the issue, and finally, the Obama lawyer conceded, "Yes, religious institutions could become targets." Ladies and gentlemen, it's going to happen. This church is going to be targeted if we stand on God's word.

And I want to say this without equivocation: if the Supreme Court of the United States makes gay marriage the law of the land, neither I nor this church will honor the decision of the Supreme Court. We will defy the court. And you say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You're going to defy the highest authority in the land?" Ladies and gentlemen, those nine justices in black robes are not the highest authority in the land. The judge of all the universe has already spoken out on this issue. He said marriage is between a man and a woman, and there is no appealing that decision. And by the way, what is happening in that particular circumstance is just one of many examples of the suffering and the persecution that is beginning against Christians in this country as well. I list a number of those cases in my book. Let me just mention several to you.

In New Mexico, Christian photographers were sued by two lesbians under the state's sexual orientation law after declining to photograph the lesbians' commitment ceremony. In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a teacher at Park Lakes Elementary School sternly ordered a fifth grader to stop reading his Bible during free reading time. She told him, "Put that Bible on my desk." The teacher then left a voicemail for the boy's father telling him that those books were not allowed in her classroom. A colonel's column was removed from an Air Force National Guard newsletter because the writer violated military policy by including references to Jesus Christ. Two ministers in Ohio who owned the Hitching Post wedding chapel were told they had to either perform same-sex weddings or face jail time and up to a $1,000 fine. An Arkansas middle school banned a Christian student from wearing a T-shirt saying "Virginity Rocks." On the back, it reads, "I'm loving my husband, and I haven't even met him." The school banned the T-shirt because it might lead to uncomfortable conversations about sex. One can only imagine the T-shirts that were allowed in that school. A Christian T-shirt maker in Kentucky was targeted by the Lexicon Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission for refusing to print gay pride designs for a local homosexual group. And on and on and on it goes. It's just beginning, and we shouldn't be surprised. Remember, they crucified Jesus. Why should those who follow Jesus expect any less?

And yet, with this coming persecution comes a tremendous opportunity for the people of God. Do you remember Paul's words in Philippians 2:15-16? He was writing to a culture that was even more decadent than ours. Remember what he said: "In the midst of this crooked and perverse generation, in whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so in the day of Christ I may have cause to glory because I did not run in vain or toil in vain." He said, "Philippians, it's getting dark out there, but remember this: the darker the background, the brighter the light." As this world, ladies and gentlemen, becomes darker and darker, the light of the Gospel shines even more brightly. And that's why it is imperative that we take advantage of that light. Jesus said in John 9:4, "Work while it is still day, for the night comes when no man can work." Yes, the darkness of the world provides a great opportunity to share the hope of Jesus Christ. And never forget this: the night is always the very darkest just before the dawn of Christ appearing.

Speaker 2

This growing persecution is one of the many reasons Pathway to Victory exists because the darker our culture becomes, the brighter the light can shine. Earlier in my message, you heard me talk about the forthcoming Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage. This teaching you heard today was, of course, delivered prior to the judgment of that historic case. Obviously, Christians lost that battle, and the world has grown darker since. It's one more reminder that our time is running out, and broadcasting the truth of God's word has never been more urgent.

For this reason, I'm urging you to participate generously in the active Salt and Light Matching Challenge. Some special friends of our ministry put forward $1 million for the sole purpose of motivating you to give generously. Right now, because of the Matching Challenge, every dollar you give to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory will be matched and therefore multiplied by two in both size and impact. Together, we can show our courage and faith in Jesus Christ and be a beacon of hope and a testament to the enduring strength of the Christian spirit in America.

And when you give a generous gift today, I'm going to say thanks by sending you a brand new book I've written for you. It's called *Shine the Light*. My book will help you identify ways to become salt and light as you choose to follow Christ in important areas such as forgiveness, encouragement, and serving others. We have a window of opportunity in our country to shine God's light with freedom, but there's no guarantee it will stay that way.

So let's seize the moment while there's still time before July 6th. Be sure to double the impact of your generous gift to Pathway to Victory through the Salt and Light Matching Challenge.

Speaker 1

David thanks Dr. Jeffress. Today, when you give a generous gift to Pathway to Victory, you're invited to request a copy of the brand new book by Dr. Jeffress, Shine the Light. You can give online at ptv.org or call 866-999-2965. And when you give $100 or more, you'll also receive the complete collection of audio and video discs for this month's teaching series, Shine the Light. And because of our Salt and Light Matching Challenge, any gift you give will be doubled in impact. One more time, here's our phone number, 866-999-2965. Or even easier, go to ptv.org. You could send your request by mail. Here's that address: P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins. America's moral standard appears to sink lower with each passing day. How much worse can things really get before Christ returns? Hear a timely message called the New Moral Disorder Friday on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.

You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. And right now, your ministry gift will be matched and therefore doubled in impact thanks to the Salt and Light Matching Challenge. Take advantage of this opportunity to double your impact before the deadline on July 6th. To give toward the matching challenge, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.