Ignore the man behind the curtain…
Here’s the thing… I remember years ago reading “A Christian Manifesto,” by Francis Schaeffer. In it he documented how the Christian persecution began in ancient Rome. Many think the Christians were persecuted just because they were Christians, because of their worship of Jesus Christ as God. In reality, the Roman Empire didn’t give a hoot who people worshipped. In fact, Roman society, and its religious appetite, would best be described as a pantheon; there were numerous Gods that were worshipped by Romans and nobody really cared.
So, what happened? Well, as things in the Roman empire began to go south, as we see happening in America, the powers-that-be, or “were,” in this case, realized they needed something to unite the people, to bring solidarity, something to tie the social fabric of society together; like what happened here in America, say, during the Second World War. However, forcing the people to give up their religions of choice was not the answer and would never bring unity to the Roman people, so…
The Romans decided they needed one central idea to bring the people together. The answer was that one day a year, all Romans would be required to pledge fealty to Caesar, essentially, declaring him as God of the empire, much like when the Biblical Nebuchadnezzar required all of his subjects to bow down to his golden statue, and what Daniel’s three friends, Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego, refused to do, thus getting themselves into hot water with the kingdom… well, it wasn’t hot water it was, very hot, fire, but I digress… Likewise, the Roman mandate to declare fealty to Caesar once a year did not go over well with some people, especially Christians. They, therefore, refused to participate. They said they would only declare one person to be God, Jesus.
The persecution, in the beginning, therefore, was not the result of Christians worshipping Jesus Christ as God, it had to do with these incorrigible people refusing to participate in the once-a-year communal declaration of the goodness of Caesar, for the greater good of the Empire. People were perplexed; why wouldn’t these people participate and promote the unity that was desired by so many?
Fast forward… some of us have been castigated as Climate Change Deniers because we don’t swallow the Kool-Aid of Global Warming, or Global Cooling, or whatever phenomenon is now being caused by the climate changing on a daily and seasonal basis; then came the gender brouhaha with school-aged girls being forced to share gymnasium dressing rooms with boys claiming they were girls, and men claiming to be women wanting to use women’s restrooms in public places, and men, dressed up as women, competing and winning over women in women’s sports; and now we are at the Time of the End, the dreaded CoronApocalypse is upon us and we’re all going to die if we don’t wear masks, social distance, cut ourselves off from our families, and get the vaccine … and then keep wearing masks. Some have even suggested that each of these sins be responded to with some type of punishment. We’re not there yet but…
Is it beginning to sink in yet as to what is really going on?
Change My Mind! 