The Persecution Paradox

Father, Thank you that you love us. Grant us Jesus

and much grace in our life. May we understand the

Bible and live it in Jesus' name. Amen I asked

a question today, what is the difference between the righteous

and the wicked? If you ever asked yourself that question,

well you should. Fundamentally at the very core, the difference

is that the wicked always persecute the righteous. In fact,

Genesis three point fifteen, the prota Ungelian promise, the promise

of a messiah, God promised there would be enmity between

the seed of the woman the seed of the serpent,

and there would be a war. In other words, persecution

is a principle. Evil hates good. Don't ever forget that.

Why is this why? Because evil cannot leave good alone.

Evil cannot live unless it destroys the good, and it

can that. It cannot own, it cannot possess, it cannot

dominate and manipulate.

Evil is a virus that needs the host to destroy.

Thinking all along that somehow evil can survive when it

overtakes the good, it can't. In destroying the host that

is good, Evil destroys evil. That is the ugly side

of the persecution paradox, because the forces that are unleashed

in persecution came back upon the persecutor. In the end,

evil cannot survive because it is a parent, a spiritual

parasite that feeds on the good that will live forever.

The Bible teaches us that the stone you roll you

remember the verse, it rolls what back on you. The

harm you inflict on others to get even, it comes

back to harm you. God has revealed in scripture that

evil is a self destructive principle. Evil itself destroys evil

in the end. That omatic in the Bible for the

future judgment day. Look at Psalms thirty four to twenty one,

an amazing verse in scripture, God says evil shall slay

the wicked. He doesn't say God shall slay the wicked.

It doesn't other places, but here it says evil shall

slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will

be condemned. And so there is a self destructive principle

in evil that turns back on evil. In the end,

evil ultimately destroys itself. That's the ugly side of the

persecution paradox. But there is a very good and noble

side to the persecution paradox that we sometimes fail to

recognize when we are persecuted for righteousness sake as believers.

You ever done anything right and you're trying to go ahead,

and someone comes and they just try to gum it

up so you can't do God's will, You can't overcome sin.

Has ever happened to you? Someone just inserts themselves either

their virtue signaling their judgmental They come after you, and.

You just feel like, why did they do that? Here?

I am trying to follow God God, and they got

in the way. Well, that's a principle. It happens in

Psalms thirty four, twenty one and twenty two. Let's read

the verse we just did, and let's add verse twenty two.

The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of

those who take refuge in him will be condemned. Now,

the first verse said evil shall slay the wicked verse

twenty one, But here it says the Lord redeems the

life of his servants, and none of those who take

refuge in him will be condemned.

Dear heart, if you're struggling in.

Your life for solidity, for security, and you're fighting against

evil in your life and you feel like it's gonna

win in your life. God tells us that if you

take refuge in Him, you will be saved, you will

be redeemed. Is that an awesome promise or not? I mean,

that's something that I feel so excited about. I want

to say amen to God's word on that matter. In

the serve of them out, Jesus told us plainly that

there is a blessing that come when we experience persecution.

It's not all bad for the believer when persecution comes.

Matthew five, verse ten, Blessed are those who are persecuted

for righteousness sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Now the word blessed means happy. Go into verse eleven,

Verse eleven, blessed, happy are you when men revile you

and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against

you falsely on my account? When was the last time

when someone went after you, when after your character attacked,

your good intentions, challenged your desire to be a Christian,

put it on trial, and you're responded to saying, praise.

The Lord that they did that to me.

Howelujah that I'm being treated this way? You see, when

it's no longer about you, but it's about the Lord Jesus.

We no longer suffer for our reputation for who we are,

for our ego. We suffer for the name and the

cause and the glory of Jesus Christ. And so, friend,

if you had been given the privilege to suffer for

the sake of the Lord, you should rejoice in that

glorious privilege. My father, before he died, I never will

forget what he did. He took out the book Desire

of Ages. He was dying of this awful liver destruction,

and he said, Mike, here's a passage in this wonderful

book on the life of Christ that says, no greater

privilege can be given to the Christian than to suffer

for Jesus Christ. I'm paraphrasing it, and I thought to myself, Wow,

it said, it's the highest honor that can be bestowed

upon us. So if you're going through a hard time

because you have stood for the Lord, it is an

honor to be cherished and to praise the Lord.

For verse twelve.

Now, verse twelve is a command Christ says, rejoice and

be read that with me. What does it say, rejoice

and be glad. Why Now, here's the why. For your

reward is great where on earth, where you have no

where in heaven, you already have a reward in heaven.

If you're in the business of advancing God's kingdom and

you're being persecuted for it, rejoice for your ward is

great in heaven. And you can compare yourself to other

people in the past. For so men persecuted the prophets

who were before you.

That's pretty good company to be in. Now.

Paul agreed with Jesus when he put forth the axiom

that wherever good is found inside of human heart, that

person who desires to do good will suffer persecution. You

don't even have to be good to suffer persecution, according

to Paul, all you have to do is want to

do good, desire it in your own heart, and the

devil will come after you. He'll read your body language.

I want to follow the Lord. You may not even

say it, he can see it in your eyes.

Go after him.

He'll send his evil angels to impress to persecute you.

Two Timothy three twelve. Yes, and all who desire to

live godly in Christ, Jesus might suffer persecution. Come on,

help me, will suffer persecution. In other words, Satan's going

after you. The kingdom of darkness goes after the Kingdom

of light. If your desires to live for God, give

your heart to him.

Do it's right.

Don't expect an easy life. Evil comes after you always.

Why is this the case? Why does every Christian suffer

persecutions who deep down inside in their hearts they desire yeay,

they deeply desire to live a godly life?

Why?

Why is it axiomatic for the Christian life and that

the authentic Christian life will be persecuted by those who

fake it and despise it, who play religion but aren't

really right with God but think their righteous any way.

Through years of clinical evaluation, the world renowned psychologist and

psychiatrists Karl Jung discover the very reason for this in

the concept of shadow projection. Carl Jun came to understand Andrew,

just a hair more please, Oh my, Mike, Carl Jung,

Carl Jun, thank you, right there, little yeah. Carl Jun

came to understand in his clinical practice that shadow projection

occurs when a person disowns their negative traits that are

suppressed in the unconscious mind by attributing those negative traits

to others, often impaths, who possess the very goodness they

lack inside. In other words, they can't admit who they

are the evil inside they see in others. That's axiomatic

shadow projection leads to persecution, hatred, escapegoating of those who

pursue goodness inside and by refusing to face their own

inner darkness. Young argues that people create a false sense

of light, a false sense of righteousness, and thus they

become evil. The apostle Paul says the same in Romans too.

This idea was not created by the Swiss psychologists. It

in fact is in scripture Romans two, verse one. Look

what it says. Therefore, you have no excuse on man,

whoever you are, when you judge another, Now what does

he say for in passing judgment upon him? You do

what you condemn yourselves, because you, the judge, are doing

the same things. That's shadow projection. You don't recognize the

evil in you, you throw it on somebody else, and

you go after them. Now we've all done that, but

we shouldn't. When evil is a group dynamic, a collective darkness,

harbored in a culture of religion or a nation. You see,

it's not just individuals who can be evil. Groups can

be evil at the collect level. Groups of people who

cannot face darkness on the inside justify violence, hatred, persecution

against groups, and they stand for something they think that's right,

when really they're projecting the evil that's in them on others.

The philosopher Bertrand and Russell positive correctly that most philosophies

attempt to derive their core ideals from kindness. And that's good.

I mean, philosophers don't sit down and say how can

we be me? Philosophers tend to sit down and say,

how can we develop a way to live based on kindness?

And the philosopher Bertrand Russell got that right. But there's

one philosophy, he says, that was created that did not

do that. It was based on hatred, and it is

the philosophy of communism. One hundred million people have died

in the last century because of a forty five page

booklet called the Communist Manifesto that ends with a call

for bloody. Karl Marx's invention of communism is a system

of satanic hatred built on class and economic envy. It

demonizes the wealthy, the bourgeoisie, and it says the have

nots should have what the haves have, and so the

only way to get it is to kill the haves

so that the have nots can rise to power. And

they call that communism the public acquisition of private property

by force. In his communist Manifesto, Karl Marx calls from murder, bloody, revolution,

the seizing of children so they become properly the state,

and the hatred of a certain group called the bourgeoisie,

the haves that have what he does not have. Communism

is a system of hatred based on class envy, the

violation of the ten Commandment, as a philosophy where murder

follows unkindness envy a political and economic philosophy. Communism, though,

is not the only system that has embraced evil at

the group level. In the Middle Ages, the Church did it.

The Roman papacy morphed into a hating religious organization. The

a medieval Church of Rome, attack Bible believing Christians because

they envied the authority.

Of the scriptures in their life.

You shouldn't have a Bible, you should have the right

to decide how to follow God by reading a Bible

will do that for you. The church hierarchy wanted to

control the mind and heart instead of trusting God through

the Holy Spirit, to leave men and women to make

good and righteous decisions. So it wasn't just like communism,

which was an atheistic secularistic worldview, but in the church

the same thing happened. Groups became evil, and the Waldensian

Church of the Northern Alps, they were hunted down by

this medieval church state system, killed because they had Bibles,

because they would visit the great cities of Europe and

try to share Jesus in the Gospel. The higherarchy said no,

and they had a life spent about three years, these missionaries,

and then they were tortured, burned to death, torn apart,

and that was their fate. The reformers of the sixteenth

century and those that followed were burned at the stake, beheaded,

and hung for the discovery of righteousness by faith. Now

think about that, the idea that Jesus died for my sins,

that I am saved by the righteousness of Christ. Center

though I be I come to Christ, I cast myself

on Him in raw faith and thereby I am justified

and accepted as if I had never said. The Church

went after them for that, teaching the legalistic Church of

the Middle Ages the principle by grace alone, the foundation

principle of sola scriptora. I mean, this would have cost

you your life. In the sixteenth century, it got worse

as they came to the counter Reformation, where the Order

of the Jesuits was organized to take control of the

religious world, and they were the first globalists, with the

idea of bringing the whole world under the authority of

the Church of Rome. Protestants, though, did the same thing.

It wasn't just Rome, and time Protestants began to persecute

the Swiss reformers. Wingley drowned young Anna Baptist believers who

taught that you are saved by faith, and baptism should

be a believer's baptism, not infant baptism, and so Anna

means again to be baptized again the right way. And

so they took these college students who were teaching this

from the Bible. And here's the great Protestant theologians, Wingley,

he drowned them in the river.

Amazing.

John Calvin even took one of his adversaries, and he

agreed to his execution by burning. And then there were

Puritans in North America who killed people for getting out

of line here or there. Kissing your girlfriend on Sunday

was a major offense for them. Breaking the Sabbath, which

they thought was Sunday, defied their legalistic notions of righteousness,

and so they actually had a death decree for improper

Sunday observance Impuritan America. Now, the Bible says the same

will happen at the very end of time in Protestant America.

A lamb like beast in Revelation thirteen, there will be

an image to the medieval power of the Middle Ages,

and Protestant Christians joining with Catholic Christians and atheistic secular

kinds of people will agree to set up something whereby

if you don't go along with it, you're killed.

That's persecution.

Revelation twelve seventeen talks about that directly, right before the

mark of the beast chapter in Revelation thirteen. Revelation twelve

seventeen says this, and the dragon was wroth with the

woman went off to make war on the remnant of seed.

Christ is the seed. The remnant are the faithful, which

keep the commandments of God and have the Testament of

Jesus Christ. Satan will marshal the whole religious world controlled

by Catholicism, the harlet of the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages,

a church system that has rejected the Apostolic Gospel, the

authority of the Bible. And then also the secular world

influenced by communism and socialism and humanism will join it.

And then the Protestant world that is compromised with Rome

and the violation of the Sabbath, the setting aside of

the Fourth Commandment, they will form a union, and the

mark of the Beast will be a global test that

is coming upon the entire world. According to scripture, Friends,

when you undermine the law of God in one point,

in one single point, you open the floodgates. James tells us,

if you violate one, you've broken the whole thing. And

so Protestant America has to come to grips with the

fact that the Roman papacy in the sixth century instituted

Sunday as the Sabbath of the Church, in direct violation

of the Fourth Commandment.

At the Council Laidiesea.

In the fourth century, the church fathers that were not

fathers at all, claimed that they had the authority to

change the law of God from Saturday to Sunday, and

then they pronounced a curse on anyone who would not

go along with this, and that, in fact, the Western

the Christians of the Western Empire were persecuting the sixth

century in part because they would not surrender the seventh

day Sabbath, and they would not surrender their Bibles that

Uffla named little Wolf had given them when he was

converted to Christ, and he translated the Bible into the

Gothic tongues.

And so what.

Happened back then is going to happen at the time

of the end. Now, friends, if you think that being

a sabbath believing Christian being a commandment keeping Christians want

to be easy, don't kid yourself. See, we stand out

because of our fidelity to the law of God is

odd in the Christian world. You know, why do they

keep the Sabbath. They're judaizers, they're legalists.

Do you ever hear that? Do you ever hear that? Now?

Here's why we keep the Sabbath, because Jesus kept the Sabbath,

because Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath. And he

said so, I mean the Lord your God in the

fourth Commandment, is Jesus the Lord of the Sabbath. And

when we keep the Sabbath, we're keeping Jesus close to

our hearts. The rest we have is not a legalistic

rest based on how good we are or how good

we are in a bane.

It's a rest we have because of the cross of Christ.

When Christ hung upon that cross, he reached back into time.

He went to the seventh day of Genesis two. In

his last words words, after he had worked out our salvation,

one sinner at a time in his head, from Adam

to the end, millions of people suffering, as if time

itself stood still. And when he had atoned for every

ugly thing You've done, You've done, You've done, I've done,

as if he.

Was guilty of it.

When he had lived out the lives of the human

race Fromkosemite to Calvary. He reaches back to the sabbath

in creation the promise of rest. When God says he

finished his work, which he had done, and Jesus said,

it is finished, and he was laid in the tomb

according to the Gospel of Luke, so that they could

keep the Sabbath in accordance with the commandment. Now, friend,

if Christ wanted to change the Sabbath, he would not

have given us Matthew twenty four, verse twenty. Now you've

read Matthew twenty four thirteen. The one who endures to

the end will be saved. They's talking about persecution, But

in verse fourteen he says, in this Gospel of the Kingdom.

You know, some people said, what gospel? Well, you know,

I'll tell you what the gospel is. It's simple, Christ

died for my sins. Could someone say amen to that?

A first importance? Paul says that he was buried why

to loose us from our sins, according to Revelation one,

and that he was raised from the third day Romans

four twenty five for our justification, which means our sanctification,

which means from the death, the burial, and the resurrection

of Christ, we have been judged, we have been separated

from our sins. We have been justified and accepted in

the resurrection. That is the truth that the Reformation discovered

and that they died.

For in the flames.

They didn't die for some perfectionistic view of some final

generation nonsense. They died for the truth of Christ, our righteousness,

and for this they and died and gave us a

good example. Boy, I just got the preaching here. I

don't even know where I'm at in my manuscript. You know.

That's how it works, oh dear heart.

Wherever true faith is found, wherever godly goodness abounds, wherever

true obedience is manifested, evil always makes war on the

good that it cannot possess, that it cannot control, that

it cannot destroy. Now, they persecuted Christ because he broke

the Sabbath. You remember that. That's what it says. I mean,

here's the Lord of the Sabbath, teaching him how to

keep the Sabbath, and they kill him because he's not

keeping it the way they want him to. Amazing. If

that happened to Christ, Jesus said, they do this to me,

they'll do the same to you. It will be the

same in the church to the end of time. The

Church will be persecuted, becau Christ was persecuted John sixteen

to one, Jesus says, for these things, I have spoken

to you that you should not be made to stumble

verse two, they will put you out of the synagogues. Yes,

the time is coming that whoever kills you will think

that he offers God. What I mean, think about that

we're serving God. We're killing you.

You know.

That's what they did in the inquisitions. And Jesus gives

the reason verse three. And these things they will do

to you because they have not known me, have not

known the Father nor me. That's not our character. That's

not the kind of being we are in the Godhead.

We don't function that way. We don't hit people over

the head to make them agree with us. We don't

use force to manipulate the conscience. We send love and

truth out there, and the basis of love and truth,

people respond or they reject the truth. They don't know me.

Jesus said in John seventeen three. This is life eternal,

that they might know thee the only True God, and

Jesus Christ, whom thou hast. Whenever a church, whenever a

political philosophy or anything like that, wants to persecute somebody

to get their way, they don't know God.

That's contrary to God's way.

God can use no other means to convince us than

truth and evidence with love. So what is the good

side of the persecution paradox? I ask you this question.

Peter knew, and he shared it with us. Now, Peter

had suffered a lot for Jesus. Peter had suffered a

lot for his own problems too, But in time he

began to suffer for Jesus. He suffered as an apostle,

he lived a life of self sacrifice. He followed Paul

in his journey in the Roman world to help pick

up the pieces of Paul's evangelism and to teach people

how to live godly lives. I'd like to recommend a

chapter to you out of the book Acts of the Apostles,

because you take your pencil out and write this down.

Acts of the Apostles, chapter fifty two. I spent time

in it this morning. A good chapter where Sister White

talks about Peter sharing with us that we can develop

full holy characters through the righteousness of Christ. An amazing

chapter well worth reading. When Peter came to the end

of his life, he didn't feel like he was worthy

to be crucified as Christ was upright honorably. He said,

I am not worthy to be crucified as was my Lord.

So what they do? They hung him upside down, and

he was crucified upside down. One Peter won six the

nine speaking of the heavenly inheritance, Peter wrights in this

you rejoice though now.

For a little while. Now what did I just read? There?

For a what a little while? You may have to

suffer a various trials. Now, God isn't going to make

you suffer forever. He's not going to make you suffer

for attorney, We suffer for a little while. Next verse

for seven, so that the genuineness of your faith. He

does it to prove something, That genuineness of your faith

more precious than gold, which though perishable, is tested by fire,

may redound to praise and glory and honor at the

revelation of Jesus Christ. How many of you'd like to

own a little gold, you dishonest congregation.

I know you would love to.

I want to be great to own a little gold.

You can say, amen, there's nothing wrong with only a

little gold. But don't love the gold. Now He's telling

us that your faith, which is tested by persecution, is

more precious than gold. It's the economy of heaven. It's

what Christ gave us. It's the gold, the riches of

the character of Christ formed in us. Without persecution, without trials,

we do not develop es central Christian faith. Now, friend,

I'll say it plainly. The latesty in Church, the Last Church,

the Seventh Church, the Seventh day Church in the book

Revelation has never been tested by fire, and it needs

exactly what Peter is talking about.

The Reformers died for their faith.

But the time is coming when believers who will keep

the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus will

have to do the same. So we must be ready.

Now look at verse eight. He says, without see having

seen him, you love him. How do you know that

because you endure persecution, though you do not now see him,

you believe in Him and rejoice with an utterable and

exalted joy. I can't notice that Peter's saying, in the

midst of persecution, as we are being tested, as our

faith is on the line, we're not sad about that?

What kind of joy do we have? An utterable and

exalted joy. So I want to do a little practice

session with you here. Okay, kids, you want to come

back up for a second, just for a second, won't

be too scary. You don't want to, well, you don't

have to. No one forces anyone around here. Okay, I

mean I'm gonna practice joy up here with you. Okay,

I'm gonna do something funny, but I don't wanna do

it alone. I get embarrassed if I do it alone. Okay,

I need help. I need some little kids too, because

this is this is kind of like not an adult thing.

We're getting ready to do here.

Okay, just come up here with me now, and yeah,

oh you're all right, No, come on up. Yeah, we're

gonna we're gonna try this. You're gonna help the preachers

kind of stiff and old pull this off.

Yes, you finally can.

Oh you got the stance. You already know what I

get ready to do. Yeah, you got it. That's right.

We're gonna be happy all right now. It's joy like this.

I'm gonna ask you this question. It's joy like this. Well,

I am so happy, I am just happy. I'm a Christian?

Does that sound right?

What? Now?

If you really have joy? What do you do when

you're really happy you have joy? Don't pull that up

you might find the sound goes off. Now, what what

do you do when you're really happy, when you play

on the playground, what do you do? You ever jump

up like that? You jump up like this? No, this

is a lame jump. I'm jumping a half an inch,

but you help me jump for joy?

Ready? How high can you jump? Oh? Man, I need

a chiropractor. What how high can you go?

You go rey up? My goodness? All right, let's let's

do this. We're gonna do our best effort now. I

will give you permission if you're out there to do

the same. Just don't fall over another chair and hurt somebody. Okay,

all right, let's let's let's think about it, ready, Joe,

I love Jesus and I'm happy even things have been

going bad, but Jesus, it's good. Heymen, Yes, alrighty, I'll

have to figure my back out, but you can go back.

That's what we need to do. Thank you for helping me.

I really appreciate your help here. Okay, that wasn't too bad,

was it?

No? Huhuh? All right. Now.

When I first became a Christian at Fletcher Academy, it

didn't take long before I experienced persecution. There was a

group of students there. They were actually fooling around with witchcraft.

And I didn't know it till later, and when I

was in college, when I debriefed with one of the students,

but they knew I was trying to live a Christian life.

I'd come from an awful background, so I was trying

desiring to do good to leave my awful background. And

I don't even like talking about my awful background. But

God had given me a new life. I was fifteen,

I'd been baptized, and I began to preach and do

my best to share Christ as I knew how. And

I remember one of them and as I was mopping

the floor, hit me with the mop and tried to

assault me, and I lost my Christian experience and I

broke his nose. It was bad. They didn't kick me out,

but I said, Lord, I need self control in my life. Please,

I don't want to do this. And what happened was this.

There was a group of them that followed me, and

I remember one day in the academy, they surrounded me

and one of them took his hand and just went

like this against me. Now I knew how to hit

him back. I wanted to hitt him back. In my nature.

But I had prayed to be a Christian, so I

looked weak.

But it wasn't. One night I remember going home because

I lived with the Bible teacher Gordon Brown, and there

was two of them in a car and they literally

tried to run me over and kill me. I had

to quit worshiping at the Academy and go to a

church plant where Elder Pearson was raising up a new

congregation for my life. Now I was fifteen years old.

I learned early that if you stand for the Lord,

you can expect hard times to come your way, and

I've had to relearn that lesson from time to time.

The Book of Acts, the early Church suffered persecution for

all the good reasons given above.

As true Christians.

These early believers left us a good example of how

we should behave and how we should live. When we

were attacked for being authentic Christians, true people of God,

they didn't say, Oh, this is unjust for me, I'm

being treated awful, I'm gonna protest. They didn't do that.

That's what's wrong with the modern social justice movement. Instead,

they stood their ground. They gave praise to God, and

it was all about Jesus and not about them, and

that's why they gave us this godly example. After the

conversion of Cornelius, God had broken down the evil barriers

of racism in the Early Apostolic Church. The Jewish believers

began to rejoice that gentile believers were accepting Jesus and

being baptized into the body of Christ. The early Church

begin to realize He didn't just come to down the cross.

For the Jewish nation. He died for the whole world.

His arms reached around the planet and embraced humanity Acts

eleven eighteen. And when they heard this, they were silenced,

and they glorify God, saying then to the gentiles, also,

God has granted repentance to life, the holy spirits moving

on the nations of the world. I've seen evil in

our church at times, not just in other churches. When

God brings someone in from the outside, when they are baptized,

I am grateful when a person turns to Jesus with

all their faults, all their bad history, all their character flaws,

and they're baptized into Jesus. Isn't that worth jumping up

and down over? Okay, when they bring that ugly stuff

into the baptistry we should rejoice with smiles and singing,

not rehearsing how bad they are.

Or were right, am I right? Okay, all right?

But sometimes a saint wrongly named, who's not a saint

at all, scandalizes that baptism. Like we're lowering the standards

by baptizing people with problems or from the outside, or

allowing others who aren't members of our church to share

the joy of their baptism. I, for one, will have

nothing to do with the church community that does not

love people more than rigid scruples. Now, I care about standards.

I want to do the right thing. But dear heart,

you know what, the most important standard that we need

to honor is loving people because Christ.

Died for them. It's a huge value.

Love has a way of breaking down racist, economic, social,

and religious barriers by bringing people to gather in Christ. Now, look,

there's no such thing as one group being racist and

everybody else isn't. How many races on the face of

the earth suffer from the sin of racism, all of

them do. And without Christ, what happens to us we

are we become self fulfilling prophecies of evil shadow projection.

Dear Heart, when you can look someone in the face

and you don't care what color of skin they are.

You're not concerned about where they came from. You see

a person that Jesus died for, a potential brother and

sister of eternity. You have overcome racism Acts eleven nineteen. Now,

those who were scattered because of the persecution the rose

over Steven traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch,

speaking the word to none accept Jews.

Did you catch that?

But then verse twenty, But there were some of them,

men of Cyprus and Sirene, who, on coming to Antioch,

spoke to the Greeks, also preaching the Lord Jesus. See

preaching the Lord Jesus. See the first group was preaching

the word Bible based right, which is good. But the

second group was preaching Jesus and the word implied, and

the hand of the Lord was with them, and a

great number that believed turned to the Lord. You see,

sometimes we want to impress people how smart we are.

I know the Bible. You know your your church doesn't

know anything. You're ignoramuses. You know, we know it, we

know what the truth is. And you're arrogant and there's

no Jesus in that kind of thing. Friend, When we

share Jesus, it's not about being right anymore. It's about

helping someone get to heaven. Because God met us and

our need and was merciful to us, the early Church

had to discover that the hand of the Lord is

the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is.

With those who seek to save all the loss that

Jesus died for on the cross. Those early Christians, who

had overcome racism, made it their godly business to seek

to save the lost from different races, different backgrounds, hated

people groups, they made them Christians. They broadened the borders

of the church and made their family multi ethnic. They

were in the saving business, not the judging business, and

thus the church grew. I've been to the island of

Cyprus where lazarus second tomb is found. Did you know

that anyone been to the island of Cypress. My wife

has been there. Lazarus tomb, his second tomb, is there

because he is one of those missionaries that went to

Cyprus to raise up a church after the persecutions of Judea.

Barnabas followed and they worked the island of Cyprus, and

they christianized that island. The early Church, the Church of

Antioch and Syria, became the model church for all churches

on the move to save the lost. It's the focal

point of multi ethnic evangelistic ministry. The Black Man from

Africa Simon of Niger in Acts thirteen one is Simon

of Syene who carried Jesus Cross up the hill to Calvary.

He landed in Antioch. The apostle Paul says, God forbid

that I should glory in anything except the Cross of

Christ by which the world has been crucified to me

and I to the world. He got that from Simon

of Syreene from Africa and others who had Antioch taught

him what it means to be the people of the Cross.

Now we don't have idols, but you see what we

have back here. What is this every Sabbath you see it?

Now?

Look, this thing stood out there during the entire time

we were fighting for our church.

We had a prayer spot.

We would go, we'd pray, and we took this out

to the front of the property. When our church property

was arsoned for years, they throw pot bottles at that thing,

and they all kinds of things until finally we brought

it into the church. Why not because it matters as

an icon, it is not, but because it reminds us that.

We are the people of the Cross.

The day we stop being the people of the Cross,

we are lost, and so salvation by Christ the cleaning

of the Cross. Simon of Sirene taught the apostle Paul

that Simon the Black he came to Antioch, and there

he told him what it must have been like to

carry the cross of Christ up to Mount Calvary, where

Jesus carried his.

Sins on his back.

The man who had ravaged the church by persecuting the

church will Saul, who let him me eat?

Paul?

What did the Church of Anioch do? They sought him out.

They would not allow him to go into the night.

They would not allow their persecutor to disappear. They brought

him to Antioch, where they taught him the way of

the Cross. They helped him to become an evangelist. And

by that act of love, the persecutor of the church

became the great evangelist for the Church. Acts eleven twenty two.

Now news of this came to the years of the

Church in Jerusalem. They sent Barnabas to Antioch, and when

he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad.

And he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the

Lord with steadfast purpose.

And that's obedience.

For he was a good man, full of the Holy

Spirit and a faith and a large company was added

to the Lord. Now, friend, you don't have to be

an evangelist to help the church grow. Try doing what

Barnabas did. And X four thirty six, Luke says that

Barnabas's name means son of perdition. His Hebrew name literally

means son of prophecy. Now I've read that wrong. X

four thirty six. Barnabas means son of encouragement. I got

that Mahad. His Hebrew name literally means son of prophecy.

So how do you think it? Friends, if you want

to encourage someone who can't see what they're doing, they

can't get any hope because they're so down, all you

gotta do is go up to them and say you're

gonna make it. I see a good future for you.

You know, I can tell the Lord's gonna get you

through this. And you put your arms around them, or

you put your hand on their shoulder, and you say,

you may feel like it's hopeless. I've been through certain circumstances,

but I can tell the Lord is working your life

and it's gonna turn out okay for you. Now that's prophecy,

but it's also encouragement. So the son of Prophecy means

son of encouragement. I had someone in my life who

did that. His name was HMS Richards Junior. Has anyone

here ever met h Miss Richards Junior, former speaker of

the Voice of Prophecy. His father hm. Miss Richards Senior

started the Voice of Prophecy. My mother became a Christian

in part because of that radio broadcast The Voice of Prophecy.

I met Harold, and that's what we called him in

the Marshall Islands. I was a student missionary.

I never forget.

I was walking along the pathway trying to figure out

where I go scuba diving or something like that, and

I ran right into him. He was taller and I was.

I looked up to and said, who are you? Now,

everybody knows who hmss Richards Junior was. Back then, I

didn't have a clue he was. He says, my name

is Harold, I said, Harold who He said, Harold Richards

him Miss Richards Junior.

And then it dawned on me, Oh, the voice of

prophecy guy. Hi, how you doing. Now? Here's the thing.

He really took time in the two weeks he was

on vacation to do evangelistic meeting to spend time with

me because I had left the ministerial program to go

into pre med. They had some theological controversy which was

over the twenty third years and this and that, and

I wasn't so impressed by who was right or not

about how bad they were on both sides arguing. And

I said, I'm not gonna be anything to do with this.

And I said I'm gonna be a doctor. And I

kept telling you, Harold, I'm going to be a doctor.

And here's what he said to me. He says, no,

you aren't. He says you're not going to be a doctor.

He says, I know what the Lord has for you.

He says you are going to be a minister. He

says God has given you a gift to handle the Bible.

You need to use that giftedness as you're calling, not

to try and run from your calling. And then he

got on his plane and he flew away. Boy, that

was good, but he didn't stay away. He had a

hand radio ministry. It was a hand radio right there

on the island. So every week he called to talk

to me. I'm praying for you, son, he called me son.

Now he wasn't my father, but I didn't have a father,

so I thought that was okay. He said, Son, I

believe you're going to make the right decision about being

a minister. He kept at it all year. I took

him scuba diving before he got on the plane. It's

a good thing he survived that scuba diving trip. There

were so many sharks around that day. I thought maybe

he could be eating up in me too. But he

was okay, he's sharing with me something. Can I share

it with you? This is not in the manuscript. He said, Mike,

you know what I like about you. I says, no,

what do you like about me? Because most people don't

like me. He said, you're a man. I said, really,

he said, he said yeah. He says, you get out

here and your scuba dive, you do these rough things.

I'm with you. I said, thank you.

Yeah, I mean I wasn't sure, I was a man,

but hanging around him kind of helped. I mean, he

was a man's man obviously.

Well, at the end of the year.

Came and I had no way to get home because

Hawaii Express, my airline, had gone bankrupt. I mean I

got to the Marshall Islands with a little less than

a dollar in my pocket, and I was hungry because

I spent a day or two in Hawaii with no food,

and so I had to get back. How do you

get back home and you have no money, you have

no family. Harold Richards bought me my plane ticket from

the Marshall Islands back to the United States of America,

but he routed the trip so I had to land

in Los Angeles so I could go to his home.

I spent a few days with him. He took me

to his house. He said, I'm going to take you

out to Catalina Island on my boat. We got halfway

and had turned around and come back, but he says,

I want to take you my dad's library, and he

sat me down. He took me to his dad's library

as it was moving from the Voice of Prophecy to

a new location. He set me in his father's chair.

He says, Mike, you're scholarly like my dad was, and

I'm worried about you. He says, I'm watching and I'm

afraid that you're going to spend all that time in

those books and you're not going to spend time with

your children.

He says.

My father never took me on a vacation. My father,

as godly a man as he was, he just kept

his eyes on the books in the ministry, but he

never got out and did anything like this, he says.

My mother did. My mother is the one that helped

me to come back to christ. He says, Mike, don't

you do what I've had to experience here. When you

get a vacation, take your kids and go on a vacation.

He says, invest in your children. And that came to

my mind at a critical time in my life when

I was losing my kids because of overwork, and I

remembered Harold Richards and John Michael one day at the table.

Is after I blew my back out twenty something years ago.

I was on the floor all the time, trying to

just live through the pain of recovery. He says, Dad,

I hate you. Isn't that pretty rough to hear that

from yourself. I said, why, he says, because you never

take me fishing. You talk about it as a kid.

We don't go camping. And I remember what Hms Richards

had prophetically said about my future. At that moment, I said,

I'm gonna change my way. He said, I don't believe you.

Well.

I had to prove it to him that summer, but

I did. And my boys and I we've had so

many good times out together.

Now.

Who was Hms Richards for me? He was my Barnabas.

He was a son of encouragement. He saw a future

I couldn't see. He was the son of prophecy. That's

what the Hebrew name Barnabas means, not be as a

prophet Barnabas, and.

He could see a future.

I mean, you see the right future and you speak

it into someone's ear in the name of Christ. You

shape the future for them. Thus you have encouraged them.

You know.

I don't ever try to tell someone they're a failure.

I don't ever try to tell someone they have no future.

Let God do his work through hope and grace. When

you encourage someone who is discouraged or down by speaking

the future.

You are for them a.

Christian Verses twenty five and twenty six. So Barnabas went

to Tarsus to look for Saul. Not gonna leave Saul out.

You know, we're not gonna just let him go away.

We're dragging him back. And when he found him, he

brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met

with the church. Now here's the persecutor of the church,

now believer. And for one year they're interacting with the church,

and they taught a large company of people. And in

Antioch the disciples were for the first time called Christians.

May we be Christians their Heavenly Father. Sometimes we wonder

if we're gonna make it. We look in the mirror.

We struggle with sin at times, and maybe a lot

of times, and we just if we look at the

mirror too long, we won't make it. Thank you for Jesus,

Thank you for righteousness, or right now, righteousness that's good

enough for the judgment day.

Thank you.

That's a righteousness that can overtake every weakness of character,

every fault, and it can present us faultless before the

throne of gays. But accept it in the journey to

get there, which is huge. Lord, how on earth would

we ever make it without you? So I'm praying right

now in the name of Jesus, Lord, that you would

help the person who feels discouraged, who's been assaulted by

life's circumstances, who feels like they can't make it, who've

put forth that foot to make a difference and follow

you and persecution comes. Lord, may you give them joy

that they're on the right road, that they are accepted

at the beginning of the journey, that you will finish

the work you started in their lives. And Lord, thank you,

thank you, thank you for this. Fathers, we separate to

go and eat this fellowship meal over here in this hall.

I want to ask a blessing right now on it

so we don't have to scramble over there. But thank

you for the bread of life. Thank you for the

food we will experience together. And Lord, as we leave

this place, may we not leave alone or forsaken, but

leave with you in Jesus's name. Thank you in Jesus' name.

Amen.