Save America Ministries

Guest (Male): This is Viewpoint with attorney and author Chuck Crismier. Viewpoint is a one-hour talk show confronting the issues of America's heart and home. And now with today's edition of Viewpoint, here is Chuck Crismier.

Chuck Crismier: Today at a time when governments are increasingly persecuting Christians, it's important to remember that the church was born into a one-world Antichrist government, the Roman Empire. During the first three centuries of Christianity, there were ten major persecutions along with innumerable smaller ones.

Initially, Romans persecuted Jews and Christians together. Christians met in catacombs, which were caves carved underground for their church meetings, and they risked their lives every single time they gathered. Government agents shut down churches, arrested pastors, and sentenced believers to death, even throwing them to the lions in the Colosseum.

In fact, in 64 to 68 AD, Emperor Nero blamed fire in Rome on Christians and began the first persecution in 69 to 79 AD. Roman soldiers raided meetings and arrested believers, dragging them before corrupt judges and also confiscated and destroyed Christian writings, scriptures, and church records.

And as a result of this, records of the life of Saint Valentine or Valentine are scant. And believe it or not, the origin of Saint Valentine's Day goes back to the early Christian history of Roman persecutions. We're going to hear about that here on Viewpoint today along with many other very unique ways in which persecution is arriving or has already arrived unbeknownst to professing Christians.

So friends, there's no substitute for victory ultimately. There's no compromise with evil. There can be no attitude or action of compromise with the forces of an increasingly godless culture, nor accommodation to its demands so as to achieve some sort of a modicum of purported peace to evade persecution.

Loyalty to Christ and Christ alone is not negotiable. That has to be our heart and mindset or our faith, my faith, your faith, will fail. We can't allow that to happen. We either prevail or fail. So here on Viewpoint today, we're going to take a look at a variety of things. We're going to begin with how we got to the concept of Valentine's Day after the day has already occurred.

That's right. You may wonder, so many people have spent an awful lot of money in celebration of Valentine's Day, and I think it's a good thing because it helps us to focus on the matter of love. A song said love is a many-splendored thing. Well, it is, but it also brings some very unsplendored situations that we don't expect. And that happened to a fellow known as Saint Valentine.

It happened to Saint Valentine and we're going to see how that ties in then with the whole issue of persecution. So I welcome you to Viewpoint. I'm Chuck Crismier. It's conversation is always with ever-increasing conviction talk that transforms. Would you believe that Valentine found his way into prison? That's right. And as a result of all of that, we ended up with Valentine's Day.

Are you ready to enjoy a little trip back into history? We're going to do that for the next few minutes and again, I hope you'll stay tuned because we're going to confront some very important issues here and Saint Valentine, whether you want to attach the word Saint to him or not, it's how he is referred to and that's where Saint Valentine's Day occurred.

As a result of the history, the records of the life of Saint Valentine are somewhat scant, but there's enough for us to understand the fascinating way in which that day, Valentine's Day, got its import. What little is known from the works of like Eusebius of Caesarea or the martyrology of Jerome that was compiled around 460 to 500 AD.

There are several individuals who may have had that name Valentine that appear. Saint Valentine was either a priest in Rome or a bishop in central Italy. But in the third century after Christ, the Roman Empire was being invaded by the Goths. Claudius the Second defeated the Goths at the Battle of Naissus in 268 to 269 AD, driving them from the Danube River, gaining him the additional name of Gothicus, meaning the conqueror of the Goths.

Well, at that same time, the plague of Cypria, that's what it was known by in 270 AD, which was probably smallpox, broke out killing at the height about 5,000 people a day. In fact, so many people died that the Roman army was depleted of its soldiers. Kind of like what's happening in Russia and Ukraine now with all that war.

Emperor Claudius Gothicus needed more soldiers to fight the invading Goths. He believed that men fought better if they were not married. So he banned traditional marriage in the military. So Valentine's Day began with the banning of traditional marriage in the military. Isn't that interesting? A day we celebrate love actually began with just the opposite.

Valentine risked the emperor's wrath by standing up for traditional marriage, secretly marrying soldiers to their brides. So he was willing to stand for that which God had ordained, marriage. It was the first creation ordinance after the Sabbath. Rome was also being torn from internal rivalries which continued since the assassination of the previous emperor, Gallienus.

Claudius quelled political tensions by requesting the Roman Senate to deify Emperor Gallienus so he would be worshipped along with the other Roman gods. So we see how Roman religion and Roman power as a world government, that was the world government at the time, a one-world government. The government mandates were issued forcing citizens to worship them by placing a pinch of incense on a fire before their statues.

It was a simple act and some Christians caved. They didn't want to get in trouble and so they thought, what difference does it make? It's just a little thing. But since it clearly was an act of worship, others chose rather to die in the Colosseum before they would worship anything other than the one true God. Those who refused worship of the Roman gods were considered politically incorrect or unpatriotic enemies of the state. So they were either cancelled and killed.

Emperor Decius' persecution intentionally targeted Christians by issuing government mandates and executive orders forcing them to deny their consciences or die. We're going to pick up on that and see where this leads. What if your government ultimately ended up telling you that you couldn't get married or that you couldn't have your kids married? That marriage was not going to be aligned with the new government beliefs?

That's not very far off from what's happened in China where China many years ago, 30 years ago, decreed that you could only have one child. Any other children that were conceived had to be aborted. And then again, because men were more valued than women because you need them to fight your wars, guess who got aborted? The girls. The girls got aborted.

And today there's a dearth of girls because there are too many men and not enough girls. And so marriage is put at risk and so does the future of China. You see how things can happen through governmental edicts, ungodly governmental edicts, as it was with Rome. When Claudius Gothicus demanded that Christians worship pagan idols and statues of deified emperors, Saint Valentine refused.

Saint Valentine refused to worship pagan idols and statues even by offering a pinch of incense at a statue. He was arrested and interrogated by Claudius Gothicus. Claudius was impressed with Valentine and tried to convert him to paganism to save his life. What would you do? What would you do if you knew that you were on the chopping block so to speak? Your government was against what you had to believe or what you said or what you were going to do and so on in the name of Christ.

But Valentine refused and tried to convert Claudius to Christianity instead. Well, isn't that what a wonderful Christian man would do like the Apostle Paul or you? But that was very offensive to Claudius. So Valentine was arrested and dragged before the prefect of Rome who condemned him to die. While he was awaiting execution, Valentine preached to guards and other prisoners.

It was kind of like Peter and John in prison or Paul or maybe you. His jailer, Asterius, asked Saint Valentine to pray for his blind daughter. When she miraculously regained her sight, the jailer converted and was baptized along with his entire family. Sound familiar? Story right out of the Bible it almost sounds like.

And right before his execution, Saint Valentine wrote a note to the jailer's daughter encouraging her in the faith, signing it, "from your Valentine." And that's how it began. The Valentines you buy, we buy. Saint Valentine was beaten with clubs and stones and when that failed to kill him, he was beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate on February 14th, 269 AD.

In 496 AD, 200 years later, Pope Gelasius is credited with designating February 14th as Saint Valentine's Day. So how did Saint Valentine's Day get associated with love then when he was subject to persecution and beheading? Well, remember in the high Middle Ages of the fellow by the name of Geoffrey Chaucer, called the father of English literature, and he wrote a poem called "Parliament of Fowls", an assembly of fowls or birds, an old word for bird.

And he described how many bird species chose their mates in mid-February. For this was Saint Valentine's Day when every bird of every kind that men could imagine comes to this place to choose his mate. The association of birds with fidelity and marital love came about because the majority of bird species are believed to be monogamous.

Many bird species are considered to mate for life such as varieties of swans and geese and ravens, cranes, blue jays, owls, hawks, woodpeckers, and so on, doves, bald eagles. After elaborate courtships, depending on their species, these birds remain together until one partner dies. Birds that mate for life often take turns sitting on the eggs, females at night and males during the day.

So after Chaucer's poems, more references appeared in literature associating Saint Valentine's Day with courtly love. The same was true with Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream". He said, "Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past. Begin these woodbirds but to couple now." Well, interestingly, since the Roman persecutions, Christianity has become the most persecuted faith in the world with over 300 being martyred every single day now, or one every five minutes, mostly in communist and fundamentalist Islamic countries.

The Center for Studies on New Religions reported that in 2016, 90,000 Christians were killed, 30% by Sharia Islamic terrorists. Saint Valentine's love for Christ and his loving example of heroic valor still inspires believers to follow the scriptures, believe it or not. And God demonstrates his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Interesting history concerning Saint Valentine.

But from there we're going to take a little bit of a look considering that the majority of those who are being killed right now across the world are being killed 30% by those following Sharia law. So we're going to take a look at how a different form of persecution is coming around. Yes, as a result of the Democrat Party. And it has to do with Sharia law.

Now that may sound strange but as I said today, we're going to take a look at some of the strange ways in which persecution actually takes place. Sometimes through outright confrontation, other times through the excusing of that which is dangerous to the Christian faith and to society as a whole, but nobody really wants to say so until it's too late. Until it's too late to say you're sorry.

And that's exactly what has happened now. Democrats dismissed a House hearing on Sharia law, labeling it a distraction. Well, in what way? They claimed that white Christian nationalism poses a greater threat than Sharia law. Now try to get your mind around this. The Democrat Party and its leadership, like Jamie Raskin, claimed that white Christian nationalism poses a greater threat in the United States than Sharia law.

Yet Sharia is the foundation for everything that the majority of the persecution to death that is taking place in our world. How can we understand this? If you have come to the place where you have no fear of the God of creation, the God of the Bible, and you think all religions are created equal and don't really matter, which is basically what the Democrat Party believes.

They despise Christianity, most of them despise Christianity because it says there's only one way, one truth, and the one life, just as Jesus said. "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me." They say well, we can't abide by that because we'll lose political support then from those that don't believe in the Christian faith.

So we're going to believe in all faiths and we're going to be free and willing to have empathy toward others who don't. Now there's no empathy for Christians now because now they're labeled as Christian nationalists. Everybody who is a true follower of Jesus Christ now is labeled a Christian nationalist. If you believe, if you believe that Jesus Christ is the only way, the only truth, and the only life and that all other religions do not follow the path that Jesus trod to head toward the pearly gates.

So multiple Democratic lawmakers were dismissive of a congressional hearing this last week about the growing threat of Sharia law in the United States, claiming it was a distraction from the greater dangers allegedly posed by the Trump administration and what they call white Christian nationalism. Now this is going to take us back to the great state of Texas. That's right.

This program airs from a satellite agency that is right in the heart of the specific area that this congressional hearing was dealing with. Right outside of Dallas, Texas. It was a two-hour hearing last Tuesday by the House Judiciary Committee, subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, about the creeping influence of Sharia, Sharia law, was chaired by Representative Chip Roy of Texas.

Last December, Chip Roy launched the Sharia Free America Caucus with another Texas congressman amid fears their state was being inundated with Muslim immigrants who aim to establish self-governing enclaves under Islamic law. Now self-governing enclaves means that those areas would be governed exclusively by Sharia law. The Constitution would have no bearing and anyone who dealt with them or inside them would have no constitutional rights.

In other words, defying the very essence of the country, which was a Christian-based legal system for the most part. So that caucus, called the Sharia Free American Caucus, has now expanded to 38 members from 18 states. In other words, they perceive that this movement toward the establishment of these Sharia enclaves is very dangerous. They made the statement, "If Texas falls, so does the nation."

Now you may wonder, how does this connect in with the whole subject of persecution? You see, persecution comes in in different ways. Sometimes it comes in on the feet of what some have called toxic empathy. In other words, too much love, too much acceptance of something that isn't really love at all, but it's the willingness to avoid confrontation, to avoid confrontation over truth and so to embrace that which is not true, that which is dangerous, in order to avoid, well, can't we all get along in other words? Can't we just all get along?

How many people, how many congregations, how many churches, how many pastors have drifted in that direction over the past 25 years? Thousands, my friends, thousands. Not willing to take a stand for Christ but willing to sort of make little compromises here and there like dropping a pinch of incense at the foot of a pagan statue. Well, it doesn't really matter that much. We just need to get along with these people. We don't want to be offensive. We don't want in other words, always rationalizing and justifying the failure to stand in the evil day.

So what's happened now? Representative Roy expressed concern that Texas has become ground zero of efforts by radical Islamists to infiltrate the United States and implement Sharia law. What is the effect of implementing Sharia law, friends? Well, the effect is that all over the world where Sharia law is implemented or supposedly supported, people are dying for their faith. They're dying for their Christian faith by the hundreds of thousands.

30% of Sharia Islamic, 30% of all Christians killed since 2016 were killed by Islamic terrorists. What are they? Fundamentalist believers in Islam that are seeking to establish total Sharia law control. Well, that's exactly what happened when Muhammad and his folk attempted to take over Europe and had to be stopped in 700-something AD. And it's happening in the United States, yes in Texas.

There is so much more about Chuck Crismier and Save America Ministries on our website, saveus.org. For example, under the marriage section, God has marriage on his mind. Chuck has some great resources to strengthen your marriage. First off, a fact sheet on the state of the marital union, a fact sheet on the state of ministry, marriage and morals. saveus.org. Marriage, divorce and remarriage. What does the Bible really teach about this? Find all of this at saveus.org.

Also, a letter to pastors, The Hosea Project. saveus.org. And many more resources to strengthen your marriage. It's all on Chuck's website, saveus.org. Again, you can listen to Chuck's Viewpoint broadcast live and archived, Save America Ministries' website at saveus.org.

Welcome back to Viewpoint, I'm Chuck Crismier. I opened the program today with some words from Chapter 7 of my book "When Persecution Comes: Preparing Hearts for Perilous Times". That there's no substitute for victory. There's no compromise with evil. No matter how loving you want your feelings to be, it is not loving to compromise with evil.

There can be no action or attitude of compromise with forces of an increasingly godless culture, nor accommodation to its demands so as to achieve some sort of purported peace to avoid persecution. And that's where we are today. People are so weak in their faith in large measure across the country. They have not been discipled properly or adequately as to what Jesus' version of the faith that he offered was.

It was Jesus who said if they persecuted me, they will persecute you. Why do you think you should be different than your Lord? It was Jesus who said that blessed are men when they revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets that were before you.

Jesus had a very different attitude toward these things than we do today. He did not have what some are calling toxic empathy. In other words, to always have good feelings to excuse or accommodate or refuse to oppose that which is evil. All in the name of trying to get along and feel good. It doesn't work. You either prevail or fail.

If you do not have a copy of my book "When Persecution Comes: Preparing Hearts for Perilous Times", you really need to get it. You really do. It's going to encourage you, it's going to strengthen you in your faith, it's going to help gain perspective of what is actually and realistically happening all over our world and coming rapidly in this country. And today we're describing a couple of ways in which it is coming in this country.

One of the ways is through Sharia law. So we go back, but when we go back to what's happening in Texas, I want to make possible you're getting the book "When Persecution Comes". It is a $25 book and I'm going to make it available to you for your gift of $15 to Save America Ministries today. $15. You won't find it that way on the website, but I am taking author's prerogative here to make it available to you because I want you to get a copy of this book.

The whole purpose for writing the book is not to make money. It's to help professing believers become strong in the Lord and the power of his might, to prepare them for what is coming. And it is coming, and it's coming very quickly. $15 on our website saveus.org, give us a call 1-800-SAVE-USA, write to us at Save America Ministries, PO Box 70879, Richmond, Virginia, 23255.

Writing a check add $6 for postage and handling. The best thing in the next day or two before we get it changed on the website is to give us a call at 1-800-SAVE-USA or write to us and include $15 plus $6 postage and handling, and we'll get the book in your hands. Within a couple of days, hopefully we'll have it changed on the website. "When Persecution Comes: Preparing Hearts for Perilous Times".

All right, we go back to Texas now. This program airs by satellite all over the country and around the world from the very area that Congress was talking about last Tuesday concerning the threat of Sharia law taking over Texas and through Texas the entire country. So Chip Roy expressed concern that Texas had become ground zero of efforts by radical Islamists to infiltrate the US and implement Sharia law, which is a combination of politics, religion, and social principles.

All of the above. And there's no escaping it. You can't believe in Sharia law and anything else. It's all or nothing. He said he had spoken to Texans in the Dallas-Fort Worth area who claim portions of the metroplex have effectively become no-go zones for non-Muslims, echoing similar situations in Europe and the United Kingdom, which you've heard about before.

Members made specific mention of Epic City, a controversial plan to build a 400-acre residential estate open only to Muslims 40 miles northeast of Dallas in an area that has one of the largest Muslim communities in the United States. So Representative Roy said if Texas falls, so does the entire country. He said it would be safe to say that the goal of those organizations and the Muslim Brotherhood is for the Western Hemisphere, for Western civilization, the United States and Texas as ground zero to become totally Islamic.

Robert Spencer was a witness there at that hearing. He said there's no doubt about that. He serves as the Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, has written extensively about the threat of radical Islam, and he's predicting the competing legal systems will increasingly clash amid rising race of Sharia adherents in the West, which he said radical Muslims intend to destroy by using its own weaknesses against it. In other words, they're using democracy, freedom, to promote lack of freedom under Sharia law.

As Sharia is considered divine law, those Muslims who adhere to it consider it always to take precedence over the laws of the land. There is no doubt, said Roy, that the radical Islamist political agenda is to destroy Western civilization from within. But it's not just a political agenda. It's a religious agenda. It's all of the above: political, religious, and social.

It is a complete system and once it is established, you dare not resist it. If you do, you'll lose your life. By word and edict of Muhammad himself. And the goal more than any other, the objects of his scorn were Jews and Christians. He said look for them behind every tree. Find them and kill them. Does that sound like persecution?

Some people will say well, no, like George W. Bush down there in Texas who was once the President of the United States, he said well, Islam is a peaceful religion. He has no knowledge of the truth. What he's looking at is what happened initially when Muhammad began to have his visions and so on, and he tried to choreograph Jews and Christians to embrace his Islam.

And he thought it was going to be easy to do, but when they resisted, he was no longer peaceful. Everything else that he wrote superseded what he had earlier written about peacefulness. And it was about war, Jihad. And when you become the object of Jihad, which is exactly what Muhammad commanded of all Muslims against Jews and Christians, who are conceived to be the foremost objectors to Sharia law, you are by definition to be eradicated from the earth.

Now you may not like the way this is being expressed today because I'm expressing it truthfully, just like Saint Valentine did with regard to the matter of marriage and refused then to adhere to the emperor's edict to prevent marriage. He said no, that's what God ordained. He agreed with God and disagreed with the emperor who claimed to be God.

You see how this works? Persecution comes in in many different ways. And it has entered our country and the UK and Germany and France. It's entered the entire Western world exactly the same way. They couldn't come in by the sword as they tried to do initially under Muhammad and were about ready to take over Europe until in 700-something AD, they were held off by a great battle, set them back many years, decades, millennia almost.

But now in the fullness of time, the battle lines are completely drawn. And persecution is the natural result. That's why it's happening so much in Africa, but it's happening in different ways in the UK, where whole enclaves are set aside. You dare not even walk there. In London, in Germany, in Belgium, in Europe's so-called Christian Europe. It's an invasion and persecution is the natural result.

It's happening because largely because of something that has recently been called toxic empathy, that excuses evil or willing to wink at it in order to try to supposedly demonstrate compassion that's severed from sound moral judgment, that's severed from truth, severed from long-term consequence and ceases to be a healing force and becomes a tool to be weaponized. We'll be right back.

Have you ever considered what the early church was like? Many people are developing a heart longing for a greater fulfillment in our practices as Christians. A recent study showed 53,000 people a week are leaving the back door of America's churches in frustration. What is going on? Why has there not been even a 1% gain among followers of Christ in the last 25 years? Could it be that God is seeking to restore first-century Christianity for the 21st century?

Jesus said, "I'll build my church." Is Christ by his spirit stirring to prepare the church for the 21st century? The early church prayed together and broke bread from house to house. They were family, and it was said by all who observed, "Behold how they love one another." Incredible. But the same can be found right now. Go to saveus.org and click Cell Church. We can revive first-century Christianity for the 21st century. It's about people, not programs. It's about a body, not a building. That's saveus.org. Click Cell Church.

Toxic empathy. That's where we're going in this section of the program today as we wrap up. There was an article in the Atlantic by Hillary Clinton. She called it "MAGA's War on Empathy". The piece is a case study in the Chinese version of TIFA, TIFA, applied to Christians and her goal is to limit your ability to discern. Clinton frames the entire moral universe this way: that empathy equals Christianity.

In other words, Christianity is all about feelings, not about truth, it's about feelings. And resistance to progressive policies equals cruelty. She says how can a person of conscience justify the lack of compassion and empathy while collapsing complex moral debates about immigration, abortion, and gender ideology into a single accusation saying you don't care? So if you don't agree with political liberalism, godless liberalism, you are by definition lacking in empathy, lacking in compassion, and lacking in care. It's a trap, friends. Disagreement in the name of truth becomes sin under toxic empathy.

Slogans weaponize compassion by demanding emotional alignment while forbidding us to make moral evaluation. Empathy becomes toxic when it leads us to affirm sin, to validate falsehoods, or to support destructive policies. Some call it third-way Christianity. Calling for less polarization becomes spiritually and theologically dangerous. Neutrality or false empathy always favors the lie. Calls for empathy on clear moral issues often function as a pressure to compromise because the slogans themselves are never morally neutral.

As Jesus made clear, truth divides by nature. He said, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." He knew that truth divided naturally. A Christ follower who trades objective truth for the appearance of compassion and feelings will not be a light to the world, will be absorbed by the world. It is a form of persecution by accusation: you are not loving, you are not empathetic, you are not full of compassion.

My wife has had to watch this in my own life. She is far more feeling-oriented than I am. She loves the Lord with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we have our conversations every day are about the truth of the word, will, and ways of God and application of it. First in our family, and then in the broader body of Christ, and then in our country and the world. But she sees things through a little different window than I do.

To me, compassion and empathy have to be rooted in truth. If they're not, even the compassion and the empathy is false. It's leading to something else that's not true, even though it may make you feel better at the moment. So if we think back to the book of Romans Chapter 1, we can see how this works. The Apostle Paul was talking about the condition of the general mind and heart set of humankind in the last days.

He said that knowing God, they refused to honor and worship him as God, and their foolish minds and hearts became darkened. And gradually over time, they begin to replace the truth of God for a lie. He doesn't use the word compassion, he doesn't use the word empathy, but that's what he's talking about because they begin to adopt practices and lifeways that are contrary to God's creation order.

In other words, allowing the practice of lesbianism and homosexuality and so on, and ultimately pederasty and bestiality, whatever. All of these ungodly practices become normative because people want to just get along and don't want to be oppositional and don't want to be confrontational and want to be perceived as loving and want to be perceived as empathetic and kind. And that's what's driving the acceptance of the practice of homosexuality and lesbianism, transgenderism, now pederasty, in the church.

All over the world, all over the Western world. So the Apostle Paul says this, and I urge you to go back and read Romans Chapter 1. He says this that now they begin to practice these things and their foolish minds and hearts become progressively darkened until they basically have adopted a reprobate mind. In other words, their minds are not aligned with the truth of God's word, will, and ways, but they're aligned with their feelings.

They're aligned with this false compassion, this false empathy that allows them to embrace practices that are abominable in the mind and heart of God. And that would include divorce, by the way. God says he hates divorce. So how is it that it got approved so much in the church? Through feelings, false compassion. It's not that we shouldn't be compassionate toward people whose marriages are breaking down and so on.

I have no problem with that, in fact, I have great compassion for people like that. If I didn't, I wouldn't have been able to practice law for 20 years with 40% of my practice in the area of family law, in the largest family law court in the nation, Los Angeles Superior Court system, where 80% of my clientele were from the broader body of Christ. Wouldn't have been able to do it. But I still had to stand for what God said about the truth.

So I always attempted to guide the people as a Christian not to embrace their feelings as their Lord, but to embrace what God said, what Jesus said about their marriages. But almost inevitably, they chose to embrace their feelings. I understood that. But I could not personally adopt that viewpoint. Unfortunately, many so-called Christian lawyers did adopt those viewpoints together with their clients.

So it would be very hard for them to truly represent themselves as Christian lawyers because they were not Christian at all in terms of their embracing things that God said he hates. So where did Paul go with this in Romans Chapter 1? He concluded that passage by saying the problem is not just with those who do these things, who engage in these practices, but with those who approve them or go along with them through false compassion and therefore empathy becomes toxic.

It begins to excuse or approve evil. And God said, through the Apostle Paul said, you're just as guilty as the ones who practice it. Why? Because you allowed your feelings to approve that which God calls an abomination or hateful. Therefore you are just as guilty as the person who does them. Now you say where does this come in the area of persecution? You're talking about persecution today. Yes, that's true. And here's how it works.

Just as Hillary Clinton said, if you don't agree with the practice of homosexuality, if you don't agree that people are born gay so to speak, if you don't agree that people should be entitled to divorce and remarry sequentially as they wish when their spouses are still living, if you don't agree that people should be allowed to and doctors should be allowed to take off the breasts of young ladies because at that point in time they're feeling more masculine, if you don't agree with those things, you are by definition lacking in compassion and without empathy and therefore are not to be accepted in modern society.

Now the initial response to that is to be cancelled out. We're not going to give you any credence for that because you are unloving, you're unkind, you're mean, you're cruel, you're ugly. And that's what's happening in many churches. Those kind of accusations are coming against Christians. It's a kind of persecution that comes supposedly on little cat feet. It's toxic and it will kill the body of Christ.

The Apostle Paul spoke to this in 1st Corinthians Chapter 5, this concept. Because there in the Corinthian church that thought they were the height of biblical Christianity, there was a man that was engaged in sexual promiscuity in ways he said you couldn't even find outside the church in the pagan world. He said you cannot allow this in the name of empathy or in the name of compassion, you cannot allow this to continue in the body of Christ.

Because a little leaven will leaven the whole lump. A little Sharia law will leaven the whole country. A little divorce will expand divorce. A little homosexuality will expand its acceptability. You see how this works? He said you can't do this. You must remove that person for the sake of the body because a little leaven will leaven the whole lump. He said they have to be removed in order that they can take seriously what they're doing and repent. Then when they repent, come clean before God and turn from their way, receive them back. And that's exactly what the Apostle Paul did. But you can't receive them back if they refuse to repent.

This is the problem that's happening in the pastorate, friends. Just again in the last couple of weeks, several more pastors of mega churches have been dismissed from their pulpits. Why? Because of sexual promiscuity problems in their lives that people winked at. Their boards winked at out of compassion or empathy. But that spirit is spreading throughout the pastorship in our country.

And yes in the very area in which Sharia law is trying to take over in the broader Dallas-Fort Worth area, in the past 18 months, a minimum of 11 pastors of mega churches and ministries spreading across the world have been removed from their pastorships and their leadership because of this very problem: false empathy and compassion when they should have been identified by their boards and so on. But they were too big to be identified. No, we're just going to go along to get along until actually it came public and then it was too late.

Look, persecution comes because others don't like truth. Bottom line, persecution comes because others don't like biblical truth. They consider it antithetical to their religion or antithetical to their feelings, antithetical to political power, antithetical to something else that they hold dear. And you and I, as followers of Jesus Christ, have to be aware, discerning, when these kind of things arise. Not because we're against people, but because we're for God.

Who are you for? Choose you this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord come what may. I hope that also is your choice. Get a copy of the book "When Persecution Comes", friends, "Preparing Hearts for Perilous Times". $15 will put the book in your hands. Call us 1-800-SAVE-USA, write to us and add $6 for postage and handling. God bless until next time on Viewpoint.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Viewpoint with Chuck Crismier. Viewpoint is supported by the faithful gifts of our listeners. Let me urge you to become a partner with Chuck as a voice to the church, declaring vision for the nation. Join us again next time on Viewpoint as we confront the issues of America's heart and home.