He comes

The media continues to mock and ridicule Christians, as it has been doing for the last forty years or so, with an emphasis on believers in the American South. And why not? If believers show themselves to be fools, why shouldn’t the world mock them? But there are more ways than one to be martyrs for Jesus Christ, and more ways than one to be fools.

The more that a follower of Jesus witnesses for Him to the world purely and simply by living his life in Christ before the eyes of the world, without apology or defence, but with a ready willingness to give the answer when he is asked, the more the world will marginalize and isolate him from themselves. It is the world that erects the border wall of separation, not the disciple.

There is another kind of believer, though not in Jesus, but in some idol that he sets up and calls Jesus. He lives his life not in Christ but in a strictly circumscribed set of prohibitions which separate him at almost every juncture from everyone else, from everyone who is not likewise bounded. He erects the border wall of separation, or rather he paints himself into a corner, and spits at all who pass.

The more that a follower of Jesus thinks, speaks and acts according to the tradition handed over to him by Christ and the holy apostles through the written Word, the Holy Scriptures, without compromising what is not negotiable, without dissimulation but also without provocation, the more the world will consider him a fool, but a dangerous one, again one who must be marginalized and ignored.

There is another kind of believer, though his belief is no more than that, a kind of blind acceptance of, not the apostolic tradition but, the rootless, shallow concoctions of human rebelliousness and pride, combined with a kind of spiritual sloth and eagerness to exalt whatever is not costly, who has no inkling of what faith is, only vain talking. Him the world does not fear, but defames and mocks.

Though the world is evil and willingly fights against the saints, it does so by stealth, by indirection, in hidden ways, ashamed already of its own certain defeat, which the Son of God has accomplished in His death and resurrection, hidden from the world, but still known by it. Rarely does it publicise its attacks on the saints because of this knowledge of its certain defeat. Already it cries out, “Rocks fall on us, and hide us from the wrath of the Lamb!”

But when the world fights against the shadows that it has produced through its own subtle instigation and sly inventiveness, dressing itself up in costume of ‘believers’ or ‘Christianity’ so that it can do mock battle with these wraiths and show them defeated, it is only the serpent devouring its own tail, it is only the circus raised up to amuse itself publicly because in secret it is full of dread for the punishment that is to come. Who as gentle as the Lamb, who so meek? Yet, He roars as a Lion out of Zion, and He comes, He comes to judge the earth with Justice, and the nations with His Truth.