ISIS, healing, and what Jesus promises us

This just in: More martyrs. More headlines and tweets on ISIS.

Christian, this world is not your friend. Yes? My world is so removed from this world. I was probably cleaning up chicken poop while these faithful brothers were being killed for their faith. I search the Scriptures some more, asking God to help me reconcile these startlingly dissimilar pictures in my mind. A friend just relayed the story of a miraculous healing of a man in Africa, who had been lame. Now he walks. This man fully believed in Jesus Christ, the healer, and was completely healed.

And then these men are murdered for believing in this same Jesus Christ.

Life for one and death for the others? Why? It seems like it doesn’t make any sense.

But actually it does. The exact same sorts of stories are situated right next to each other in the gospels as well.

Reading the news recently has been startlingly similar to reading my Bible.

Matthew 14 is the prime example of this odd juxtaposition. In this one short chapter, we see Jesus’ dear friend and family member, John the Baptist, beheaded for his faith. Why didn’t Jesus come save the day? In fact, we know that John was imprisoned all the way back in Matthew 4:12. That’s TEN chapters where Jesus could have intervened and saved him from execution.

But He didn’t. Why?

Because Jesus was saving people. Through His preaching, through His proving (miraculous signs & wonders) and through this persecution He was displaying the Kingdom of God.

In the very same chapter, in the same breath as John’s martyrdom, we see Jesus miraculously feeding 5,000 people, see Him walking on water and empowering Peter to walk on water, see Him healing ALL who were sick. Even those who just touched his garment were all healed.

While they were being healed, John was being killed. Why?

We have been traveling this road together the past few months, seeking to better understand “suffering” from a biblical perspective. We tend to lump it all together as one, but Scripture actually makes some clear distinctions, and I think these are critical if we are to understand (at least a bit better) why we see Jesus allowing healing and killing in the same chapter.

Throughout the gospels we see this same progression:

PREACH & PROVE (signs) —-> PERSECUTION

See, you’d think that if you were healing people and casting out demons and preaching the way to eternal life, everyone would be happy. Not so. The preaching and the proving always led to persecution. Why?

SATAN!

Satan, people! Our enemy! Remember him? We forget that the whole world is under the sway of the evil one. We forget that this world is not our home. We forget the the world hates us, does not know us, is not our friend.  Those who follow Jesus will rejoice at His miraculous power, but when the Word of God and the power of God are clearly displayed, the enemy is furious.

I believe that God is reviving His people to believe Him at His Word once again. I believe He is opening our eyes to His full power and salvation, His promises and glorious riches in Christ, and when we begin walking in the power of God and truly believing Him, do you know what will happen?

Persecution. And while Jesus has promised to be our Healer, Deliverer, Savior–Jesus doesn’t promise to save us from persecution.

In fact, He promises not to.

Jesus promises persecution. He promises He will heal us (including our bodies!) and deliver us, He will deliver us safely into the kingdom of heaven, but He also promises that it is through much suffering and persecution that we will enter that kingdom.

While we are all outraged by seeing ISIS kill Christians, I am more outraged by seeing CANCER kill Christians. Both are horrific, but I see one clearly promised in Scripture and the other clearly conquered in Scripture.

I might have lost a lot of you just now. Please, I plead with you to hear my heart: I’m not saying we cannot glorify God in death by cancer. I believe many faithful men and women have done just that. Persecution specifically displays the POWER of God in our lives. When those martyrs were singing God’s praises at the top of their lungs, just before being beheaded, they got the world’s attention.

I also want to clarify: This doesn’t mean we don’t pray against persecution. When Peter was imprisoned we see the church faithfully praying for him to be released. And he was. Miraculously. But in the same chapter James was martyred. And history tells us that Peter was eventually martyred as well.

I plead with you, followers of Jesus Christ, to go back to the Word of God and see clearly what Jesus did and taught. What did He promise? How have we strayed? Where have we listened more to popular opinion than the actual words of our Lord?

His salvation is more wonderful than we could ever imagine. And the reward for those blessed martyrs is more unimaginably glorious than we could ever fathom.

I have a feeling those dear Ethiopian brothers have no regrets right now. And we will honor them someday, in heaven, for their faithfulness to the name of Jesus.

Let’s honor them now by returning to Christ ourselves, and committing afresh to follow Him through the pages of Scripture and into our daily lives. Open up the gospels and meet this Jesus all over again. We will never regret calling Him our king.

{Thank you for reading.}