By Fenter Northern
We Christians can allow ourselves to become pessimistic with all the doleful headlines and dally media behaving so irresponsibly. Partyism has relinquished all restraints and gloom and doom seem everywhere.
However, the Christian must keep in mind two facts; while we must admit disappointment is most everywhere, things are no-where near what they were before God graced history with the fact of Jesus who came when they were nailing people to the cross if they were viewed as religious or political threats. Second, for Christians, Jesus meets all the negativism around us.
Jesus told us beforehand, in Matthew 13, there would be enemies against the message of truth, but to pay no attention to them; He would deal with them in due time.
So we are to ignore all the pessimists who shake their somber heads in their defeatist moods thinking Christianity is losing out in the twentieth first century. Sure, Paul says, we might be cast down, however, there should not be one iota of defeatism in the Christian heart. There is no indication of its demise.
Christianity has survived abysmal historic periods in church history. John the Revelator gave a sad picture of ecclesiastical conditions at the close of the first century with five of seven churches in Asia having severe problems. The infamous anti-Christian mood in politics took its toll on key figures in Christianity, bringing crushing blows when great figures like Peter and Paul were crucified, however, faith survived, being true to Daniel’s words that the kingdom of God would never be destroyed (2:44)
Relief came when the emperor Constantine issued his Edict of Toleration in the 4th century, only for the church to apostatize into a catholic hierarchy.
And so on down through two millennials; however, as insignificant to the world as the true faith may be, we are still here keeping the hope alive for which others have been imprisoned or executed.
So do not let us think the violence, the greediness, the lust for power, pornography, abortion, revolt, selfish ambitions, and world tensions are the end of the matter; no, not for one minute. Nothing has ever before, which means nothing ever will offset the purpose of God dying on the cross to save this wretched world.
While Jesus was realistic about the power of evil, no one ever looked unto the future with more hope than He. When He met with his disciples after his resurrection, He did not say, “Well the game is up, you see what they did to John the Baptist, and to me. Go back to your fishing.”
No, with the nail prints still in His hands, He said, “Go into all the world, and preach the good News to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.”
And they went everywhere preaching the word. And here we are now–here I am writing this optimistic, hallelujah article.
And why is this true? Don’t stop reading at the sad news in the Parable of the Sower where the enemies came in while the sowers slept, and sowed their bad seed among the good.
Read the entire parable and see the optimistic close where, in spite of the enemy, some sowers brought forth thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, and some a hundredfold. And so has it been through the centuries. During the “out of seasons,” maybe it was thirty of sixtyfold, or less, but in the “in seasons,” up to one hundredfold.
Through the centuries the church has had rugged saints with a tough faith for tough times who stood with their feet upon the Rock of Ages. Now, today, Jesus speaks to you and me saying as He did in old Judea, “And these are they which are sown on good ground; such as hear the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred.
And so must it be, and when it was so, another, “these are they” will follow the first: “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”