Attacking the Church

It's well-known that persecution makes the Church stronger. We don't currently perceive that the American Church is under persecution (and often hear that perhaps we'd be a better Church if we were). But we need to realize the enemy has more than one way to attack us.

We are messengers, and more importantly, demonstration of the Kingdom of God in this world. Kingdoms of men, through whom the usurper prince of this world works, rightly perceive our message and our presence as a challenge to their rule. Satan's first attack against God's Kingdom is always what it was against the King, violence and murder.

The rulers of the Jews accused Jesus to Pilate for "...saying that He Himself is Christ, a King." (Luke 23:2) Roman soldiers to whom He was sent for flogging mocked Him as King of the Jews.

But Pilate was reluctant to sentence Jesus to death. The Jewish rulers egged him on, saying "If you release this Man, you are no friend of Caesar; everyone who makes himself out to be a king opposes Caesar." (John 19:12)

When Pilate then took Jesus before the crowd and they shouted for his crucifixion, he asked, "Shall I crucify your King ?" The crowd shouted back, "We have no king but Caesar !!" (John 19:15) In the end, Jesus was crucified under a sign proclaiming Him "King of the Jews."

The One we follow was judged and executed entirely on the question whether God or man (and through him, Satan) is the ultimate sovereign. The world's rulers and people, even God's Own people, rejected Jesus as King with violence and murder. Satan himself must have believed those tactics had thwarted God's rule. Instead, God's sovereign power and wisdom worked victory from the enemy's scheme, and confirmed Jesus as King forever.

But Satan and his minions continued to oppose God's rule. Rome persecuted the Church throughout its first centuries. Under that attack, the Church continued to grow, and grew stronger. In the end, the emperor Constantine (either because he himself became a believer in Christ, or as a political ploy to enlist Christians in his cause) made Christianity the religion of the empire. Caesar's purposes were thereafter officially deemed to be identical with those of the Kingdom of God. The slippery question of Church-state relations has continued every since.

Since Constantine, kingdoms of men have often made God an adjunct to their purposes and actions. Christian rulers notoriously enlist God in their wars, even against other Christians. Germany's army-issue belt-buckle in World War I, for one example, boasted "Gott Mit Uns" (God Is With Us). German troops wore it into battle against Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Americans whose leaders likewise vehemently assured them God was on their side.

Abraham Lincoln was one of the few human leaders who understood the spiritual issue for rulers and nations of men. A group of clergymen assured him the Union cause would triumph because "The Lord is on our side." Lincoln replied, "I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side."

The enemy isn't, at the moment, persecuting the American Church. His tactics are more subtle, and more successful. He instead co-opts the Church to the operative idea that America's national purposes are God's purposes. Most American Christians in our time are doubly co-opted, operating also by the unexamined idea that one political faction's purposes are America's hope, and thereby God's purposes.

When the Church' operative thinking is co-opted by the enemy, the result is co-operation in his opposition to God's Kingdom. Satan is no fool: he realizes that persecution, at best, produces only reluctant compliance, and will ultimately strengthen the Kingdom he seeks to overthrow. But a Church which will think as he wishes, and acts according to its co-opted mind, will do as he wishes, of their own will.

May God open the eyes of the American Church and send His Spirit of repentance on us !!