Are you ready for an invigorating journey into the heart of early Christian history? Strap in as we embark on a voyage to the city of Smyrna in modern-day Turkey, a place once home to a small Christian population amidst a larger Jewish one. We unpack Jesus' letter to the Church in Revelation 2:8-11, where He acknowledges their tribulations and poverty and promises the faithful ones that they will not be hurt by the second death. As we pull back the veil, we reveal how some Jews of Smyrna conspired with Romans, a conspiracy portrayed by Jesus as the synagogue of Satan. This chapter is an eye-opener as we discuss these historical facts and their impact on the early Church, paving the way for an understanding of Jesus’ words.
What does it mean to remain faithful in the face of persecution? Ponder this as we delve into the lives of Polycarp and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, two faithful Christians who stood firm in their faith despite intense persecution. Drawing inspiration from Revelation 2:10, we reflect on the significance of standing firm and counting the cost. But it doesn’t stop there. We further explore the power of prayer, the importance of repentance, and the value of active participation in our local churches. We all bear a collective responsibility - a responsibility to pray for Israel, our families, and ourselves. Join us on this inspiring journey as we uncover the richness of our faith, the power of our commitment, and the strength of standing firm against all odds.
Are you ready for an invigorating journey into the heart of early Christian history? Strap in as we embark on a voyage to the city of Smyrna in modern-day Turkey, a place once home to a small Christian population amidst a larger Jewish one. We unpack Jesus' letter to the Church in Revelation 2:8-11, where He acknowledges their tribulations and poverty and promises the faithful ones that they will not be hurt by the second death. As we pull back the veil, we reveal how some Jews of Smyrna conspired with Romans, a conspiracy portrayed by Jesus as the synagogue of Satan. This chapter is an eye-opener as we discuss these historical facts and their impact on the early Church, paving the way for an understanding of Jesus’ words.
What does it mean to remain faithful in the face of persecution? Ponder this as we delve into the lives of Polycarp and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, two faithful Christians who stood firm in their faith despite intense persecution. Drawing inspiration from Revelation 2:10, we reflect on the significance of standing firm and counting the cost. But it doesn’t stop there. We further explore the power of prayer, the importance of repentance, and the value of active participation in our local churches. We all bear a collective responsibility - a responsibility to pray for Israel, our families, and ourselves. Join us on this inspiring journey as we uncover the richness of our faith, the power of our commitment, and the strength of standing firm against all odds.
Let's open in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, I give you thanks today for the people within the sound of my voice. I give you thanks that you provide us with a refuge, father, a refuge from the chaos and the craziness that is the world that we live in. And for the Christian Father, it's painful and it's demoralizing and it hurts to see the destruction and the hatred and the ugliness, as everyone seems to have taken sides, but so many people have forgotten to take the one side that matters, which is your side, father. I heard it said once that we had two choices revival or not. Lord God, I asked for revival today. I asked it from my small spot in this world that you would provide that which is so necessary Revival, whatever we as Christians can do to facilitate that, whatever you would have for us, whatever job or rule that we would stand, because our time of choosing is now. Our time of choosing is coming close in this country and in many cases, it's right on top of us. Father, god, I give you thanks. I give you thanks for all things.
Speaker 1:I lift up a special prayer for my friend John Thorpe, my brother in Christ, who lost his wife this week to cancer. Father, we know that Antoinette is home. We know that she is in no more tears, no more sorrow, no more pain. But I pray for John today as he prepares for memorial service and starts to get himself squared away for the rest of what you have for him. Keep him strong and bring him peace. In Jesus' name, I pray, amen.
Speaker 1:Good morning gang. We're here. I have a couple of things that I'd like to go over with you before I get started. It's been over a month since I've done this Again. I just have to apologize and throw myself on your mercy and ask for your prayers. I will tell you that, with the events that have gone on since October 7th, I have to tell you that I just couldn't settle my mind to do anything. I couldn't settle my mind. My head was spinning and I hurt for the people of Israel, for our brothers from the tree that we're grafted into. Our brothers and sisters. Lord, I asked you to protect the Israeli father and we hope and pray for their protection and for all of the things that go along with that.
Speaker 1:It's something we're going to talk about a little bit today, but I wanted to open with a question in a message that I've entitled the Persecuted Church. If you're able to do so, if you could open your Bibles, please, to Revelation, chapter 2, verses 8 through 11. That is, this is the second letter that Jesus wrote to the church in Smyrna. It is a church that's under heavy persecution and with that in mind, I have a question and I'll ask it in a moment. First, I've got to tell you, you know again, that the persecution, the outright slaughter that's happening in Israel right now breaks my heart, breaks my heart. I have opinions on what's going on and all of those things, and I normally keep those to myself to stay focused, focused on teaching scripture, and I'm not going to change that stance this morning. Instead, I'll provide facts First.
Speaker 1:When people and I won't say Palestinians, and if you want to know why look up the origin of the name Palestine and where it came from, you'll determine quickly, I think, that Palestine's not a state or a nation state at all. But when people chant from the river to the sea, palestine will be free. That means from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea in Israel. These are the eastern and western borders of Israel. Their intention, make no mistake, is to wipe Israel from the face of the earth. It's in their charger folks. Second, that being their intention to annihilate Israel. The two-state solution that everybody talks about is now, and has always been, a myth. It's a convenient trope for politicians to use to comfortably straddle the fence of their constituency.
Speaker 1:And this last piece is the biggest part of it, and this is where we're going to kick things off. Third and last, god is still on the throne. None of this surprises him, and as darkness falls on this world, christians must always remember that, always remember that. And now, like I said, open your Bibles up to Revelation, chapter two. We're gonna pick up in verse eight and go to verse 11.
Speaker 1:This is the new King James version and we're going to read it. It says and to the angel of the church, and Smyrna write these things. Says the first and the last who was dead and came to life. I know your works, tribulation and poverty, but you are rich, and I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear any of these things in which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested and you will have tribulation for 10 days. Be faithful until death and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death. Again, that's new King James version, revelation two, verses eight to 11. Jesus says I know your works, I know your works. And then he says tribulation and poverty quote or parentheses. But you are rich. Wait what? You are not rich. How does that work?
Speaker 1:Hold that thought, though, and we'll delve into a bit of history, to kind of set the stage here. Smyrna was a city located in what is now modern day Turkey. During the Greco-Roman times, it boasted a strong Jewish population as well as a small Christian one. History tells us that some of the Jews in Smyrna conspired with the Romans and worked to root out the Christians. Okay, I believe that these Jews are the ones Jesus is referring to when he calls them the synagogue of Satan in verse nine. The church was really up against it, yet Jesus says do not fear these things which you are about to suffer. He tells them the devil is going to throw them into prison so that they may be tested and that they will be in tribulation for 10 days.
Speaker 1:All right, so before we delve into the couple of different thought processes around the 10 days here, I wanna say something quickly about the Christians and how this letter is laid out. Notice as you read it Jesus has nothing against this church. Every other letter with the exception also, then, of the letter to the church in Philadelphia, which we'll get to later Every other letter starts with the positives, the things that Jesus sees, that he appreciates and that he gives credit for. And then he says but this I have against you, and if you'll remember, in chapter one it was you've left your first love. It was you've left your first love, and we talked about that at length. But this he doesn't have anything derogatory or negative to say about how this church is handling things, and that's because they're under the gun. They are sacrificing everything, including themselves, quite literally, for their faith. Okay, so again, and we're gonna get deeper into that, but I just kinda wanted to throw that out there.
Speaker 1:So let's now talk about the 10 days. As you might imagine, there are two schools of thought, and possibly even three, about the significance of the 10 days tribulation in verse 10. Firstly is a literal 10 days. The other is a symbolic view. This view suggests that the 10 days are representative of the 10 persecutions that began with Nero and ended with Dio Slayton and I'm not pronouncing that correctly in the third century. Okay, so it's either 10 persecutions over a period of time, right, or 10 literal days. As you might imagine, I land in the literalist camp, but no matter where you land on the scale, to me it matters very little. Jesus tells the church that they will be persecuted and that it will be terrible, and to him that overcomes, he will give the crown of life. Okay, so at the end of the day, yeah, you know what? There's some question among theologians about what the ten days means. It doesn't really matter. Ten days of Deep persecution versus ten days of our ten periods of time of deep persecution Matters not in, in my view, as to what, what the Actual, if you will, situation on that is, and that is a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1:Okay, now for the two questions I had at the top. The first is what would you do if? Okay, and I want you to think about that what would you do if, if, like the Christians in Rome, smirna, you were commanded to bow and Acknowledge the deity, the false deity, of Caesar. Okay, that's where we, that's where we find ourselves when Jesus mentions these kinds of things. That's the time period that these folks were living in Rome. Rome wanted complete control, they wanted to close their fist and, and you know, their vision of the world was a Roman, a pox romana. Right, a pact with Rome, a pox romana that was going to. Yeah, you can have your faith and whatever else, but ultimately you have to own this faith that you have in Caesar. You have to acknowledge his deity. Okay, would, what would you do? Would you? Would you? Would you acknowledge it so that you could go along, to get along and keep your faith yourself, would you say, as polycarp did in Smirna?
Speaker 1:And we're gonna talk a little bit about polycarp. Polycarp was a, a deeply devout Christian in Smirna. He was a leader of the church out there. He said this quote when they asked him, when they told him this is what he needed to do, and and at the end of the day, as you read that history, the, the Roman, the Roman in charge, kept saying to him just just acknowledge it, I'll let you go, I'll let you go, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Okay, but it wasn't fine.
Speaker 1:Here's what polycarp said, quote 86 years I have served him, meaning Jesus, and he never did me wrong. How can I blaspheme my king who saved me? He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't do it. And To to Common Joe and Jane. It seems like a really simple thing, but when you have a relationship With the savior of the world and you know Personally that he reached down and plucked you out of the Myrie clay and he saved your life, you can't turn your back on him Because he didn't turn his back on you.
Speaker 1:And what was called polycarp's price? All right, we talk in Christian circles about counting the cost. That means what's this gonna cost me, right? Well, he was burned at the stake. But the story goes, the accounting goes, and it it's said to have been witnessed and written down by somebody in Smyrna. When it happened, he was burned at the stake, which was the way they did it. They burned them at the stake and and the interesting part is, the fire wouldn't consume him. That sounds familiar. That's not familiar to you, because it sounds familiar to me.
Speaker 1:Biblically, in Daniel, shadrach, meshach and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace. They were thrown into fiery furnace by Nebuchadnezzar and the fire did not consume them. And there was a fourth in the furnace who was like a son of God from Nebuchadnezzar. So the fire didn't consume polycarp. So a guard Roman soldier stepped forward and stabbed him and the blood flowed so greatly from the wound as to douse the fire. He died. He died, okay, or would you say, as Bonhoeffer did, dietrich Bonhoeffer, during the Second World War. For those of you that don't know, he was a Lutheran pastor who ran underground church in Germany, got Jews out of Germany, also worked with the Allies to overthrow Hitler.
Speaker 1:There's a great book by Eric Metaxas, simply titled Bonhoeffer, if you want to learn a little bit more about this wonderful human. Bonhoeffer said this as he was being led to the gallows Quote. For me, it is not the end but the beginning of life. Think about those for a second. And let me tell you, as a side note, that history is rife with this kind of martyrdom and this kind of faith, this kind of absolute, unbending faith.
Speaker 1:Okay, if you want to take a look, I would suggest Fox's Book of Martyrs. You can get it on Kendall. You can order it in a lot of places. I think it's free now. It may even be public domain, I'm not certain about that, but it's Fox's Book of Martyrs and there are a couple of other ones, two volumes called Jesus Freaks, which are stories about people like this, people who were persecuted, not always in the first century, oh, no, no, no, no People during the Cold War. In the Middle East, in China, in Turkey, all these different places, people are standing for the Lord.
Speaker 1:Okay, now this goes back to what Jesus said up here, and I want to touch on this. I know your works, your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich. Why? Why are these people who are so far up against it? Why are they rich? Why does that happen? They're rich. Think about this. They're rich because, no matter what the leaders in this world are, the leaders in this world or the leaders that are persecuting them, due to them, they win. They win.
Speaker 1:You think about Stephen, the first martyr. You think about Stephen, and Stephen said Father, forgive them. He matched Jesus and he said forgive them. And then he could see Jesus. And then he went home. Who won? Yeah, stephen was no longer on this planet, but he was. No more tears, no more sorrow, no more pain. He had taken. What one of my favorite Christian artists, tobi Max says is the J-Train? Okay, he'd gone home.
Speaker 1:So the question becomes A question of where do you stand in that reality? Okay, one only need look around the world today to come to the conclusion that what I'm calling our time of choosing is coming. It's coming. Churches in the Middle East, people in the Middle East, china, africa and many other places suffer unending persecution. Yet, I will tell you, in spite of the negative pressure, muslims that's right, muslims are coming to faith in Jesus at an exponential rate. Jesus works through persecution.
Speaker 1:You think about. You think about the church in Israel, the first church, the apostles church in Israel. Okay, what happened? The persecution got so hairy under Paul Okay, under Paul, when he was persecuting Christians, that they spread out and the church itself exploded to all corners. Driven by that persecution, we win, okay, but let me speak to my American listeners for a moment, if I could Put bluntly guys, we know nothing of true persecution.
Speaker 1:But, as I said, our time of choosing is coming. All you have to do is look around to see where we are, okay, as a whole. You look at all of the poison that is culturally acceptable today, right, christians are being pushed down and told to sit down and shut up, okay, and many sects of Christianity are doing exactly that. They are doing what we laid out at the beginning they're going along to get along. I've seen so many disgusting things. People send me things, different, crazy, unbelievable things that I won't go into because they're just disgusting. The things that the church is doing to go along to get along, the things that they're accepting and I'm sure that you guys know exactly what it is that I'm talking about. But this is nothing new. It's nothing new.
Speaker 1:In the 30s in Germany, hitler took over the church and Bonhoeffer and his folks chose not to go along to get along and they grew an underground church that was called the Emergent Church Okay, but the state church was all Nazi all the time. It was unbelievable to read. It's unbelievable to read about. If you want to read a little bit about that again, eric Metaxas wrote a book recently called An Open Letter to the American Church and it's very much a worthwhile read. But we've seen it lately.
Speaker 1:We got a small taste of that persecution. The church at large got a small taste of that persecution during COVID in 2020, when churches were deemed non-essential. Okay, the pot shop was essential. That was essential. Home Depot, lowe's, they were essential. Right, the bar was essential. You know any place where there's open debauchery and whatever else that was essential, but the church, oh no, no, no, no. We can't have the church. And in Colorado, where I came from, the church at large got together and petitioned the governor there and got permission to even in the early parts of COVID after a couple of weeks to get permission. They got permission to have services and of course there were all kinds of hoops you had to jump through and everything else, and that was a small taste of persecution. Okay, but I digress. If you remember my initial question, I asked what would you do if? Okay, I didn't ask about your church or your deacon or your pastor or your priest, or I didn't ask what they would do. I asked what you would do.
Speaker 1:And the choice you make, the mountain on which you stand, will come with a cost, with a price, and we've been through this before as Christians. I've been through it. It could cost you a friend Yep, been there. Family member Yep, been there A job Not quite, I haven't had that, but it did cost me a promotion and it can cost you your freedom or even your life, turning your Bibles over. We haven't turned much this morning.
Speaker 1:Let's turn over to Mark 1311. The book of Mark. Of course you're going to come to the left. You can't go much further right. Come to the left, and it is the second gospel, matthew, then Mark. Go to Mark 1311.
Speaker 1:And in Mark 1311, and I left this in the new living translation because I want to make sure that this is 100% clear Jesus says but when you are arrested and stand trial, don't worry in advance about what you'll say. Just say what God tells you at the time, for it is not you who will be speaking, but the Holy Spirit. So, basically, what Jesus is saying here is that God's going to give you the words to say the Holy Spirit's going to give you the words to say the stand to take. So if you're worried about that, if you're concerned about whether or not you'll stand up for Christ in that moment, first of all the fact that you're worried about it tells me a great deal, okay, about where you stand with Christ, and I will tell you that in that case you don't have to worry, because Jesus is going to be there.
Speaker 1:You know it's interesting and I'll leave you with this the persecuted church or persecution of the body of Christ, the individuals that actually make up the church. It's not anything new, and you know so many people have always asked well, where's God when all this stuff is going on? It's so terrible. La, la, la, la, la la. Well, yeah, it is, and God and Jesus is right there with you when you're being persecuted, and I mean truly persecuted. I'm not talking about a knucklehead movie made at your job. That's not persecution. You were just being a knucklehead, okay. So let's get that straight. If you jumped up on the table at work and said, except the bread of life, you know that's. And then you got written up and possibly fired, you know for proselytizing, okay, you know what, that's not persecution. That's not persecution. That's you being a knucklehead, okay.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about real persecution shutting down churches, submitting the sermons to the state authority, having your home fellowship raided and having people hauled away and put in prison or tortured, or both, for their faith. And the only, the only out, the only, the only thing they have to do and the world doesn't get it, but the only thing they have to do in that case is they have to say, yeah, I no longer believe in Jesus. I accept whatever it is that they're offering right the Muslim faith. You know, in Russia, you know, I accept full allegiance to the state, because the Russians did away with religion by and large and the state was the religion of the, of the, of the proletariat.
Speaker 1:But a believer, someone who has a deep faith, an understanding of where we are and what we're doing, a believer, will not do that. They can't because they know that Jesus counted the cost and he paid the ultimate cost for them, for you, for me, and they won't do it, no matter what happens in this world. They can't win. It's a no-win scenario. So stand strong, make your choice, choose Jesus and stand strong for what is coming. And finally, if that kind of faith really blows you away like you're sitting there listening to me and you're like I couldn't do it, there's no way I couldn't do that I couldn't say for me it is not the end but the beginning of life I could not say as Paulicarp did, how can I blaspheme him who saved me, knowing that all he had to do was agree with the Roman, the Roman authority, and that he'd be set free? He chose the other and he won and left a mark that we're still talking about today.
Speaker 1:And if that kind of faith blows you away and you say to yourself you know what, if all this stuff is coming, you know, if all this stuff is coming, I need to be on the right side of this. All you have to do is talk to Jesus. All you have to do is talk to Jesus and you have to understand that we were born separated from God. Okay, we were born separated from God because of sin, and God gives us an opening. It's a free gift to accept him and repent of our sins and be marked by the cross of Christ forever.
Speaker 1:And if you'd like to make a commitment to Jesus today, all you have to do is talk to him and you can say something like Dear Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner in need of a Savior. As I listen to this and as I hear this Lord, I can see you've shown me how things are and where things are, and I need to get right with you. I need to make a choice. My time of choosing is now and, jesus, I choose you. I promise to repent from all of my sins and follow you all the rest of the days of my life. Thank you, jesus, for dying on the cross and for rising from the grave three days later for me, amen. And if you prayed that prayer, welcome to the family of God.
Speaker 1:Now, normally, I would say something to the effect of I really love to hear about it. My website is down currently and the email that went with it is also down. It's one of the things I'm rectifying this morning. But get involved in a local church. Get involved in a local church and dig in and I'll have resources back up this week. That's all the time we have today, friends. Pray, pray for Israel, pray for your family, pray for yourself. Make a count gang and be blessed.