Dietrich Bonhoeffer, like Martin Niemoller, was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor who bravely opposed Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer was not only imprisoned for his staunch opposition to Germany’s maniacal Fuhrer, as was Niemoller, but he was martyred as well. He was hanged on April 9, 1945, just two weeks before his concentration camp was liberated by American soldiers. Like Niemoller, Bonhoeffer is also best remembered today for something he penned. In his case, however, it’s not a verse, but a volume, his book: The Cost of Discipleship.

To Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the call to discipleship was a call to suffer. In addition to this, Bonhoeffer saw suffering as the cost of discipleship as well. In 1945, ............

Martin Niemoller was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor who bravely opposed Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. Although he escaped execution, he was Imprisoned from 1938-1945 in two of the Nazi’s most infamous concentration camps, Sachsenhausen and Dachau. Niemoller is best remembered today for the following famous verse.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”

In 1934, Pastor Niemoller bravely mounted the ............

During its two thousand year history, the church has known times of persecution at the hands of the state, as well as times of prosperity under the state’s favor. Those times under the favor of the state have proved to be both a curse and a blessing.

During the Dark Ages, a thousand year period when the state not only sanctioned the church, but was for all practical purposes supplanted by the church, the world was plunged into such religious superstition that the flickering light of the Gospel was almost extinguished upon the earth. Had it not been for the Protestant Reformation, the flickering light of the Gospel under the bushel of Roman Catholicism may have never been fanned back into an illuminating white-hot flame.

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In 2001, in Durbin, South Africa, the devil overplayed his hand in a breathtaking move that signaled to the serious student of Scripture, as well as to the spiritually astute, that the spirit of antichrist had taken possession of our world. Although the world’s attention was quickly diverted away, by the 9/11 terrorist attack upon our nation, as if Satan knew he had prematurely shown his end-time hand, the targeting of Jews and Christians by the whole world as its lone troublemakers served as proof positive that we had come to the precipice of the Biblically predicted end-time persecution of the people of God.

In Durbin, at the United Nations’ World Conference Against Racism, the delegations of the world, with the lone ............

What little protection the church was afforded from its initial persecution by Jewish religionists was provided by the Roman Empire. The church soon found itself, however, under far more severe persecution from its former protector, Rome, than it had ever suffered under its initial persecutors, the Jews. 

It is always the tyrannical state, in its pursuit of empire, and its terrorized populace that join league to silence the Gospel and stamp out the church. For instance, the Jewish persecution of the church was perpetrated to protect the Jews from the ire of the Roman Empire. The Jewish religious leaders plotted the execution of Christ in order to protect their nation and their place (John 11:47-50). Likewise, the cry of the ............

Presidents have perennially professed to be religious; in fact, almost every American president has professed to be a Christian. Upon close examination, however, most of their Christian confessions have been belied by both their beliefs and behavior. Our presidents, for the most part, have proven themselves to be numbered among those who honor Christ with their lips, but have hearts that are far from Him (Matthew 15:18). 

Like most of our presidents, most present-day politicians, along with the vast majority of our present population, wrap themselves in religious garb and gloat over their religiosity. However, when it comes to the cardinal doctrines of the historic and orthodox Christian Faith, neither our politicians nor the ............

The church of Jesus Christ was born into a world hostile to its message. In its fledgling days it was persecuted by Jews who believed Christ to be a phony Messiah and Christianity a false religion. What proves to give one pause over this initial persecution is the fact that it was primarily perpetrated by the religious leaders of God’s chosen people, not by irreligious pagans. For far too long the saints have been snookered into believing that religion is a friend rather than a foe of the Christian Faith. The truth is; Christianity has never had a more formidable foe than religion. 

Contrary to popular opinion, Satan is not an opponent of religion, but its most ardent advocate. The Bible teaches us that he has his own &............

In his Christian classic, Born Crucified, L. E. Maxwell writes these wise words: 

“One of the most searching and condemning sentences which ever fell from the Savior’s lips was that uttered to his own unbelieving brethren: 'The world cannot hate you' (John 7:7). If ever I become so one with the world, so tolerant of its spirit and atmosphere that I reprove it no more, incur not its hatred, rouse not its enmity to Christ—if the world can find in me no cause to hate me and cast me from its company, then I have betrayed Christ and crucified Him afresh in the house of His friends. On intimate terms with this world that nailed [Christ] to the tree? Perish the thought. Mark well O popular Christian and ...............

The church of Jesus Christ has always been persecuted in this Christ-rejecting and truth-hating world. Both Jesus and Paul taught the absolute inevitability of this fallen world’s perpetual and pitiless persecution of the Christlike and godly (John 15:18-20; 2 Timothy 3:12).

Contrary to popular opinion, in our country’s contemporary churches, the true sign of faithfulness to Christ is not worldly popularity, but the world’s persecution. The only way to get along with this world is to go along with it, which means you’re definitely not getting along with God (James 4:4). On the other hand, to go the way of God rather than the way of the world is to inescapably estrange yourself from the world, which is at ............