Christianity: A Religion For Losers

good evening everybody praise the Lord can return to your seats and be seated please thank you again for opening of this Pulpit to teaching and inviting me and my wife and the warm Hospitality Pastor enzi sister NZ family uh and thank you for coming out on a Monday and Tuesday night I know you're busy I know life is hectic about a half century ago in a little town in Oklahoma a 13 year old Native American of the Kiowa tribe went to a parade off of the reservation in the local town and they watched he and his mother as one float passed by after another and coming up at the end of the parade the final float if you will was a a group of people dressed up as natives but mocking them some of them doing the war whoop the chop and some staggering around

carrying a bottle of alcohol acting like they were drunk and the little boy said that he he never really understood or never really saw what other people saw when they looked at him but he assumed that this was the clearest revelation of what he was a shameful people and he vowed that day to never be Kiowa that as soon as he was old enough he was going to move off of the reservation and merge with everyone else but on his 16th birthday he went to his grandfather's house who was the chief of the Kiowa his mother dropped him off and said you're going to stay with your grandpa today he asked for one day so he went and sat down begrudgingly in his grandfather's house and his grandfather came out in full regalia and he began to speak to him about his people's past about

the days before they were put on a reservation he told them about their Heroes about the buffalo hunt up north about their Warriors he told them him the legends he named the constellations in Kiowa he taught him some of the language but most of all he told his son his grandson rather that we are our great people I'll never forget what the young man said that he remembered thinking when he left his grandfather's house that day he said and he was an old man when I heard him say this he said that when he went to his grandfather's house he wanted to have nothing to do with the Kiowa but when he left he only ever now wanted to be nothing but Kiowa and I think about that a lot in my role we are on kind of a reservation in The Wider culture the

world is going by moving at a very fast pace and um if you look out at culture particularly portraits of us apostolics what we look like to people is a lot like what that 13 year old boy saw in his own people and it wasn't all that long ago that I was a young man very young and I remember going to school my sister and I and I remember for the first time in my life feeling and seeing with other people's eyes what they were seeing when they saw us and I had a decision to make shall I grant their vision of us shall I accept it as the true vision of Who We Are or is there a hidden greatness something they might be missing and so whenever I speak my goal every day that I teach is you may come in wanting nothing

more than to be like this world but God give me the grace pull away the Veil and so that when you leave you want nothing more than to be a Christian my theme for tonight has an unusual source of inspiration a television Mogul by the name of Ted Turner owner of the Atlanta Braves Andy Turner Broadcasting Network called Christianity in an infamous interview a religion for losers and that's the world's View and allow me for just a little bit tongue-in-cheek partially to say that the only statement Turner has ever made with which I agree is this one and in the time that I have tonight I want to show you why I think this might be the most fitting summary of the way the the first Christians the New Testament Church actually saw itself I'm going to uh use a particular person boarding school for

boys in the first and second centuries A.D on one of the walls one of the boarding schools they discovered what is now called the blasphemo graffito or graffiti of blasphemy if you would show figure one if it's up there if not understood I'd like you to come with me now back 20 centuries stand with me here near that wall of that old boarding school amid the laughter of boys running steps in the hall teachers riding on chalkboard a course of voices repeating the Roman alphabet in unison I want you to imagine two boys looking over their shoulders real quick to make sure everything is clear they laugh and then they etch deep into the wall a crucified donkey in the crudest way and a boy raising his hand in worship towards the Donkey and in crude letters writing Alex aminos sabote Theon Alex worships his

God you can see in the figure behind me this etching a donkey on a cross and a boy on the left hand side standing beneath the cross with one arm uplifted towards the cross as if he is paying homage and these boys who etched this into the stone were making fun of Alex one of us my work here is a lot like those archaeologists who uncovered this graffiti I'm going to try to remove for a few moments the layers of history that have seen Christianity transform from the band of Rejects into a religion with nearly 3 billion adherents and I want you to see our faith for a moment through their mocking eyes I want you to see them as they saw at lexaminos the religion of Rome and the Newfound religion of Christianity I want to compare the two and let's look at their

respective prospects and see which of the two should survive the passage of time the religion of Rome or the faith in Jesus of Nazareth again I'm developing or using a Persona of a an intense critic of Christianity what may be the average Roman citizen would have seen when a Christian walked by him or her in the first century these are the kinds of conversations they would have had about us let's begin with the Christians of course with Jesus the founder of the faith if you ask anyone in the Empire who knows about this God forsaken place they called Palestine Jesus suffered rightly and justly and was punished put to death as a criminal Rome knew how to handle those who put peace at risk about a hundred years before Jesus a certain popular slave fell into the hands of the great Marcus licenius Crassus a

Roman triumvir he lined 70 miles of the Appian Way with crosses and crucified all of the rebels warning everyone just how dangerous sedition against Rome can be Pontius Pilate it seems made from a Roman view a perfectly sensible leadership maneuver when he turned Jesus over to his accusers he understood that the Peace of a region and an Empire is more important than the Innocence or guilt of one Solitary Man but what of Jesus mourners were they many absolutely not the slave Spartacus had six thousand followers he and all of his followers were hung on one single day on six thousand crosses but what about Jesus how many of his followers were willing to die on a cross with him well the record shows that he was crucified not between two friends even but between two strangers the contingent of those who came in sympathy was

so small that his mother represented 25 percent of the crowd his maternal Aunt represented another 25 percent and 75 percent of the audience this is how small the audience was 75 of the audience was named Mary the only male present was the dreamy devote a misguided eccentric John but surely the most startling absence on that day according to the record was the absence of God all theological explanations aside Christians have to be careful not to so easily explain away Jesus Cry of dereliction my God my God why have you forsaken me only a religion for losers would base its faith on a God who sounded if only for a moment as if he too were an atheist and yet this is what Christianity did it wasn't looking good how about Christianity's chief Apostle the Apostle Peter I want you again to take off the lens

of later times and try to look at him from a first century perspective here's what he looks like what kind of loser do we have here one night he swears he'll always come to Jesus defense no matter the cost in the very next night as a unit unit of soldiers are dispatched to arrest Jesus Peter so ably defends his master that he takes a swing not one at not one of the arresting soldiers but he's so incompetent that he directs his attack at an unarmed slave At Close Quarters he aims for the head but as usual Peter misses catches only the ear and then he leaves abandons the one to whom 24 hours earlier he swore an undying Allegiance you could not be more unroman than that but is this the end of Peter's disgraceful night no The Comedy of Errors he has one more

show of incompetence in him outside City Hall while his master standing bound and shivering on this cold early winter or late winter early spring Twilight powerful enemies all around him Peter is warming himself by the fire three figures accuse him of being one of Jesus disciples are these powerful interrogators no the text of John's gospel draws particular attention to the fact that the one who questions Peter is not merely a Slave and is not a slave woman but it's a slave girl Peter the Great the Saint the shepherd the prince The Rock here he is disarmed rendered utterly Craven by a mere girl put Peter's cowardice in perspective while he's busy distancing himself from Jesus a more roman-like figure Judas Iscariot heads back to caiaphas's house where he will publicly and at greatest risk to himself declare Jesus innocence and and part with his ill-gotten

gains the difference between Peter and Judas hmm Peter might have been sorrowful once the crowed but he lived to see the celebration at Pentecost only because it seems he was less remorseful than Judas only a religion for losers would choose a Peter to deliver its inaugural address and this is what Christianity did it wasn't looking good the Apostle Paul let's look at him for a moment he is responsible for Christianity's intellectual underpinnings it's early theology but this man has loser written all over him from a Roman perspective he's named after the tallest man in Israel but if his nickname paulos or tiny is any indication he was unusually slight feeble unimpressive from his letters people expected him to show up as a giant but what they got instead was just about a four and a half foot man with a thin wispy voice people would

say we liked you a lot better when you were writing we were much more impressed now that we see you in person can we find another preacher please maybe the most clownish moment in Paul's career comes early on in Luke's history the book of Acts this is also recounted in second Corinthians chapter 11 by Paul himself what was Paul thinking and telling the story of how he had to escape his assailants by being lowered from the Damascus City wall in a basket what a pathetic story as we all know the highest honor a Roman soldier can be given is the Coronas Morales figure two the medal given to the soldier who's the first to risk his life and climb over an enemy City wall it's the Medal of Honor the greatest honor that Rome can bestow upon one of his soldiers if you crawl over

the wall if you're the first one over the wall you're going to die your your life expectancy is two minutes very rarely did Rome get to bestow this honor upon a living Soldier it was usually given to the family It's a combination of the Medal of Honor and the Purple Heart he died for his country the first over the wall Corona Morales but look at this story that Paul's telling it's almost as if Paul's Life as a Christian is from the outset meant to be a comical parody of The Honorable Roman soldier anyone with sense would tell a story of how a brave man climbed over the wall storming the enemy City but not Paul just look at him clownishly crouched in a basket dropping inch by inch from a rope and finally Landing but on the wrong side of the wall running away from

trouble instead of into trouble Romans were strong and proud they picked up the World by the Scruff of the neck and gave it progress whether they wanted it or not but it's almost as if Paul gloried in what Romans should be ashamed of consider also that Paul's Chief opponents came from the ranks of his own people fellow Jews and Christians from his own pen we learned that he was beaten within an inch of his life by his own people five times he left no City without helping himself to a full treatment of its prison system no sooner would Paul leave a city than that congregation would try to find better preachers and while other more sensible men who understood human nature better inspired their audiences with sermons filled with visions of the third heaven Paul stubbornly insisted that the grandest vision of God anyone could

ever see was of him hanging in bodily form from a cross from the Roman perspective Paul shamelessly fetishized what everyone else had the sense to despise most audiences are taken in with visions of Glory give them a strong God a cunning God a reasonable God a wise God a Roman god who wants to claim that they're God that made them is capable of bleeding and dying the Romans wanted to believe that they were descended from a God who was above all of that whatever you do avoid offending people's sensibilities by depicting a God who reminds them that they are sinners but no the more Paul's Vision repulsed people the more They begged for a higher more satisfying vision of God the more Paul foolishly quote determined to know nothing except Christ and him crucified unquote it never occurred to him it seems that in this

life the world was ugly enough but he had to make Heaven ugly too and feel fill it with a bleeding Dying God and at the climax of his insane grotesqueries he fantasized that he was being quote crucified with Christ for Romans again this was quite pathetic we won't even go into that episode at the city of troas where he literally bored a listener to death only a religion for losers would allow such a man's musings to fill the pages of its holy book and yet this is what Christianity did not a promising start all right that's what it looked like that's what we looked like but now let's take a look at the Roman Empire from the Christian perspective shall we the religion of the Roman Empire like the Empire itself was built to last forever it built impressive temples and brought wealth and riches

to cities far and wide but Rome and its religion for winners came at Great cost if you're going to make a Roman Empire if you're going to make that kind of omelet how many eggs are going to have to be cracked Rome was supposed to give dignity to its sons and daughters it taught them the value of Civic and familial virtue a religion for winners tends to place examples of strength before its children the gods are strong and beautiful and flawless fathers and mothers are the picture of strength the Roman Caesar as father to the nation is the essence of the perfect human so Romans rarely permitted children with severe physical defects to live that was one egg that had to be cracked The Only Way Rome could be strong was to rid itself of the week most of the Roman populace consisted of slaves

in the vast majority of the slave children were pressed into prostitution little girls were sent to the brothels to service men of the equestrian and Patrician classes little boys slaves were also sent to brothels where they would serve as Malachi or passive sexual partners for the more respectable Roman senators the strongest slaves were forced to become Gladiators who had a life expectancy of 27. the citizens needed entertained sure this might all seem a little unpleasant but Rome remember was cultivating a religion for winners only Rome Caesars were supposed to be wise but they were usually textbook examples of narcissism in megalomania and perversion tiberius's greatest joy was soaking in his Spa with little children Caligula Caesar was a paranoid schizophrenic he literally married his horse ceremony and everything and took pleasure in kissing his wife's neck and whispering so beautiful a neck I might cut

whenever I please one day he invited all of his Senators to a banquet he was unpredictable the Senators never knew what to expect this time they saw that this very cruel man had prepared for their arrival by having all the windows covered by black drapes the walls were painted black and the floor was painted black the ceiling the table the plates the candles the silverware everything black the food on the plates was black each dish was garnished by a small black Tombstone what do you suppose the message is they ate what they believed were was their last supper and Caligula his dessert was their fear Nero had himself declared God during his lifetime castrated a boy named sporis and then married him and if we're to believe his biographer septonius Nero copulated with his own mother in all of ancient literature there's hardly anything to

match the portrait we're given of the last emperor of the first century the mission he ruled while Rome was exiled or while John was rexiled exiled in Patmos what he suppose could be the perfect portrait to depict a Caesar ruling a territory so vast that it reaches from Spain and as far east as the borders of today's Iran maybe you'd think if we're going to depict such a figure it should be a man sitting on a throne dispensing Justice speaking to a former form of a hundred senators teaching a son how to rule in wisdom but no and what is surely the most astounding use of the irrelevant but telling detail in all of ancient literature buttonius says that the Caesar domitian as he stared out upon vistas of boredom enjoying Rome's religion for winners so much that he spent most of his time in

the rooms of his Palace chasing around flies and for sport stabbling stabbing them with his stylus while Christians were creeping down into dark secret places of the empire carrying the light in the future of the world Rome was busy leaving no perversion untried no blasphemy unspoken no creeping thing on worshiped no cruelty unpracticed there was a cult that rose up in ancient Rome during this time dedicated to the worship of the Divine emperors yes they were going to be worshiped all of them as gods priests especially in the eastern half of the empire formed a priesthood to worship the Emperors and coerce the population into worshiping them as well it wasn't enough for the Caesars to rule Rome they wanted to be the gods of Rome and so temples were built by these priests dedicated to Divine Caesar show the next slide and these priests

enforced mandatory pledges in their names this is a temple that was built especially for the divine Julius Caesar family in due course though a succession of miserable Emperors culminating in Nero in the year of the four Emperors otho galba the telius Vespasian the population of Rome started to wonder if they weren't just Human After All so the enthusiasm was starting to wane and the priesthood of this new religion devised schemes for generating Revenue in awe they hired clever propagandists in one particularly egregious example of Rome's commitment to propping up state-sponsored Caesar worship came in the form of a certain Heron of Alexandria he was an engineer who'd recently invented a series of mechanical Marvels show the next figure first he designed a machine he called the aliapile it was a steam engine prototype second he invented the world's first vending machine third he invented a

fountain that operated autonomously and used hydrostatic electricity fourth he invented a suite of machines designed specifically for theater for mechanical marionettes that could perform on command fly through the air dance and mime and then he also invented a thunder generator in pyrotechnics fireworks all of these automated and governed by hidden programmable devices the Imperial priests knew they had something on their hands here and so they hired him they had these devices installed in the Imperial temples that worshiped the Caesars the gadgetry was hidden from view pipes and pulleys and counterweights pressurized tubes and sealed steam Chambers below the floors and Behind the Walls of the Temple a crowd of worshipers would show up the priests would go through their duties lifting up prayers and reciting a liturgy praying that the Divine Caesars would Bless the people and then the priests would urge the people to

praise the emperor more loudly lift up your voices they would say their cries would become a chant and once the crowd satisfied the priests with their enthusiasm a signal would be given the engines beneath the temple floor would go to work suddenly the statues of the Imperial family would begin to levitate off the ground fire would appear out of nowhere and consume the sacrifice on an altar and then The Fountains of the Temple would spew water in graceful arcs dancing figures would appear the sound of thunder would Cascade from underneath the Imperial throne in the center of the temple and the statues of the old obsolete Greco-Roman Gods would bow their heads as if they too were bowing to the Caesars the new and great God of Rome the audience would stand amazed at these Marvels women would cover their mouths men fall to their

knees and sob an elderly man might lift up his eyes to heaven and and thank the heavens that he had lived to see the days of the apotheosis of the emperor then a voice a great voice would emanate from the emperor's statue sitting on the throne it was they thought the emperor himself speaking to them but in fact the voice was coming from beneath the floor where a priest would sit speaking into a hollow tube that would snake up through the statue and out of its mouth the voice would command the people to worship him alone and promise blessings upon their family and protection from their enemies in the east the shell shock crowd awed into submission would stand and in hush tones say what John the Revelator heard who is like the Beast and who can wage war against him the priest would dismiss

the crowd and people would go about their lives believing that they had seen the true power in the universe I want you to hear again the voice of the New Testament prophet long before this farce was uncovered by The Wider public John the Revelator saw these kinds of machinations and he declared the dragon has given power to the Beast to perform wonders to call down fire to speak blasphemy in other words as John saw it their Imperial priesthood was giving power to the images of the Emperors and making them out to be gods and John said it performed Great Signs and even causing fire to come down from heaven to the Earth in full view of the people because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first Beast it deceived the inhabitants of the earth it ordered them to

set up an image in honor of the Beast who was wounded By The Sword and yet lived the second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first Beast so that the image could speak somehow and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed Rome poured its Energies into communicating the propaganda of the Caesars through all of its impressive architecture in its propaganda Rome was symbolized by the goddess day of Romana next figure it was the picture of a woman riding a beast her Divine husband was the reigning Caesar standing astride the Earth and sea in every Temple a statue of the Goddess Nikkei or Nike would stand holding a palm branch in one hand next slide and then the other she would hold what was called the Victor's Crown or literally the crown of the one who

overcomes her constant presence throughout the empire was a constant reminder that Rome was number one a religion for winners only John's Revelation took Rome's propaganda and turned it on its head he pulls aside the veil in heaven and shows that Roman that Rome's pretensions to power are just a comical parody of the true power that resides in the heavens Daya Romana the goddess of Rome is merely Rome's crass attempt to achieve the Majesty of the Holy bride of Christ Rome pretended to be or thought of itself as the one who overcomes the world but that's just a tragic farce John said in fact it's a parody of the true the one who overcomes Jesus of Nazareth moreover instead of Rome being number one and holding the palm branch in one hand and wearing a crown upon its head in the end of time it will

be the Saints of Christ who hold the palm branch in one hand and wear the Victor's Crown Satan prepares a Messianic imitation for each and every generation awaiting the final showdown when the Lord Jesus Will suddenly descend with a shout as it was then so it is now in every age the enemy of our soul offers an alternative Christ an alternative Shema an alternative priesthood an alternative Eternal City an alternative peace and salvation in a word our enemy is always in the business of crafting a religion for winners a religion that appeals to our pride a religion that flatters us a religion though by the way in which only winners need to apply we are not ignorant of Satan's devices we have in the Bible the holy word of God and the testimony of all the saints the early Christians simply outlasted the empire as

the water of a river quietly outlasts the jagged Boulder that lies in its path imperceptibly wearing it away by Steady persistence over a period of centuries let me think back on how our faith overcame the empire we sometimes imagine that Christianity grew through these massive revivals maybe thousand Soul or three thousand or five thousand Soul revivals some of this has to do with Luke's Acts Luke records a few Mass conversions but these conversions these Mass conversions seemed to have only occurred in the first half of the first century and mostly in Judea in point of fact the Church of the second and third centuries grew through more conventional methods its growth was so stunning during those centuries that by the time Rome understood what had happened it was too late The Only Way Rome of the fourth Century could survive the church's silent invasion was

by joining it give me a moment to explain citizens of the Roman Empire routinely aborted exposed smothered or poisoned their female babies I want to use just one example to give you an illustration of how meaningless baby girls were to the average Roman citizen consider the following passage which I've taken from an ancient letter it was composed by your average family man of the second century Empire his name is hilarion he was writing to his expecting wife Alice here's what he said please know that I'm still in Alexandria don't worry if my servants all come back and I remain in Alexandria I ask and beg of you to take care of our baby son if it's a son and as soon as I receive payment I'll send it along to you if you're delivered of the child before I come home if it's a boy

keep if it's a girl discard and on the final line he wrote P.S you have sent me word don't forget me but how Alice could I forget you I beg you never to worry hilarion I quoted those last few sentences in the PostScript particularly even though they go beyond the point of making because I wanted to indicate for you that as far as men of antiquity go this was clearly a man of tenderness with a keen romantic sense he was not some Planned Parenthood executive the child though was given the same regard as a cut of beef that's been sitting in the house too long and needs to be thrown out my early Christians though followed the teachings of the Apostle Paul and they insisted that men and women had equal standing before Christ children were not ever to be aborted they were a gift

from God whether they were male or female healthy or deformed the dedicate which is a late first century early second century Christian document explicitly forbids the destruction of The Unborn it reads in chapter 2 verse 2 you shall not abort a child or commit infanticide and then the Epistle of Barnabas these are not in the in the Christian Canon the New Testament Canon but they are the records of later Christians the Epistle of Barnabas warns you shall not slay the child by procuring abortion nor again shall you destroy it after it's born you shall not ever withdraw your hand from your son or from your daughter but from their infancy you shall teach them the fear of the Lord I don't want you to imagine the long-term impact of these policies Rome is killing its daughters and Christianity is valuing them there are roughly two

or three boys for every girl now in the Roman Empire of the second and third centuries and this ratio is simply unsustainable it's lethal to civilization but the Civil situation is even worse than I've just described one can't simply think in terms of the ratio of boys to girls the ratio needs to account not for men to women but rather the ratio of men to marriageable women prostitution and concubineage were rampant in the Empire and some powerful men were able to hoard women having one wife and a whole host of concubines so adjusting for these kinds of factors and giving some kind of approximation of the actual situation in the ancient Roman Empire the ratio of men to marriageable women might have been something like four four men for every one marriageable woman now nature tends to keep male female at about 50 50. this

is incredibly depraved tampering with nature and it led essentially to the ruin of the Roman Empire to say that Greco-Roman men were having great difficulty finding a wife that's just an understatement but there was no such problem in the early church the ratio of Christian men to women actually in the church seems to have tilted slightly in favor of women there seemed to have been more women than men where are the Roman men beginning to look for marriageable women in the second and third centuries do you suppose they can only find them in the church but the church has a strict policy sorry Christians cannot marry outside the faith light doesn't have fellowship with Darkness so unmarried Pagan men often found themselves inclined to listen more patiently to the good news of the Gospel and so over a period of two centuries Christianity strengthened by

its teachings in paganism enfeebled by its practices went in entirely Separate Ways Christians had large healthy families and pagans had small families further weakened by routine promiscuity and sexual rivalries Christian families retained their children and created a center of gravity strong enough to hold multiple Generations in its orbit and I want to say parenthetically that the greatest revivals can be found on our own pews among our children when Israel was looking for a great strong hero to lead them out of slavery God sent them a child floated on a basket on the Nile when Israel needed deliverance from its enemies God sent them the baby Samson when Israel needed deliverance from the Philistines God sent them the boyish David when the world needed salvation I was looking for a strong and mighty Messiah a babe was born in Bethlehem when God's about to do something

big he almost always starts with the children today we might be looking for that incredible time when our altars will suddenly be full of Sinners waiting to be baptized a potential Revival is already sitting though on our own pews in the form of our children God has already answered our prayers there the Revival that outlasted the Roman Empire was not a sudden Revival but was instead a steady and patient Revival the kind of Revival that might take us 30 or 60 or 100 years to realize nevertheless they persisted the other early church had a few other traits they contributed to this astonishing success one of them was that the church was not afraid of death I want you to consider for a moment the difference between the names that Christians and pagans gave their respective graveyards as an example Pagan Romans referred to their graveyard

as a necropolis or a city of the Dead for them the grave was a place of separation permanent isolation typical artwork on Roman sarcophagi depict people being painfully and permanently separated by the gods of death when one died one could expect to go to a cold and lonely Hades where one would live out in eternity in a disembodied state in isolation the Christians though believe that this life it was this life that was often the place of alienation and suffering but the next would be a life of intimacy with God in the family and those who've gone before so the Christians never referred to their graveyard as a city of the Dead instead they invented a term they called it the coimitarian or the sleeping place it's where we get the word Cemetery it's a coinage that pays homage to Paul's impressive we shall not

all sleep for Christians deathment rest in the presence of God not separation and so this would play itself out in very practical everyday ways for the early Christians there was a plague that descended descended upon the city of Alexandria in the early third century and it wiped out half the population and we were really freaked out by coven and it ended up having something like a three percent mortality rate and that might be high but half the population of Alexandria died in this plague and those who remained living were often sent to their sick beds and so the city was like a ghost town and as the casualties mounted there was no place to put the bodies the reek of the Dead Rose and suffocated every nose the world's leading expert on medicine his name was Galen he ran for his life but the Christians

in that City were a small and persecuted isolated minority and they had primarily lived Undercover but when the plague came they came out of hiding and were the only people in the city willing to tend to the sick they showed no fear unlike the pagans they lived with death on a daily basis you see they went and treated the sick not because they believed they were immune to the sickness many of them died in the plague but they believed that death has no sting and Grave no victory so they built the world's first hospital system they nursed thousands of pagans back to health with their kindness and charity when the plague was gone and the dead were buried and the living were whole again the pagans marveled at their Christian benefactors the people they had only months before loathed and like a weed living in

a dark prison turning towards a stray beam of light trying to solve the Enigma of its existence Pagan Alexandria suddenly turned towards Christianity here was light something new in the world Christians had single-handedly saved a 2 000 year old city in Alexandria never forgot them and it became Christian long before Rome did our ancients ancient enemy is still at work today here on of Alexandria is very much with us today though perhaps we should call him hereon of Silicon Valley he still designs technical Marvels in the service of the worship of the state we have our own secular science priest craft intent on enforcement Same Spirit who said to John come up here and I shall show you that which will take place hereafter makes the same appeal to the faithful today from the perspective of the Throne of the Lamb secularism and scientism have

all but died already and are being propped up only by their own Mutual rigor mortis secularism has made life in the modern world so unbearable for so many that the official emotion of the 21st century is anxiety and loneliness is a close second man shall not live by bread alone the world says but by an endless supply of drugs this world's too much for you well here take this pill that we've engineered to help modify for a while the problems we've created for you Israel followed a holy Cloud through the Wilderness the cloud that Modern Man follows might fitly be described as a cloud of Narcotics we have Justice in our world but without virtue we have peace without love the world has sin without forgiveness it's sleep without rest matrimony without Holiness time without eternity rest in peace Young Prince the wolf is on

his way this is a dark world it's been said that there are many ways we can hold off the darkness if you're in the world but not for long eventually the lights of Life go out one by one love Health intelligence work competence political and economic stability and when that happens this world is going to need more than our cold secular Trinkets and bobbles can afford our weeping as Christians will endure for a night but joy is coming for us in the morning and from the perspective of Eternity the kingdom of God thunders in the skies and has come to the Earth and flung open its Gates and said come but yet the secular critics sit like ten toads on the bank of a Muddy Pond croaking we've won we've won we've won but no you haven't while the world recruits its adherence from among

the healthy and socially adjusted winners the Christian faith has always raised its force from the rubble not many wise not many mighty not many noble our Cornerstone is the stone that the builders rejected but when the secular dreams and Idols inevitably become Museum pieces right next to Aphrodite and Horus and Zeus all those enemies that the church has already slain the church will still Thunder Through the Ages and now the secularist assumes that Christianity has been rendered Obsolete and superseded by science I hear that cry every day but who does the modern scoffer think that we are some kind of resistance that was formed last week or last millennium no we have stared down bigger and badder and more determined foes before if we weren't extinguished when we were just a handful against the entire Roman Empire what hope can our our enemy possibly have

as the name of Christ is declared in every nation today but even if even if every last one of us were buried deep in the Earth let our enemy see to it that he sets a guard upon the tombs and seals them shut cover the valley of our dry bones in miles and miles of dirt but still beware for all it would take for those bones to become once again a living and breathing army of the Lord is to summon one Prophet to speak to those bones live do your worst enemy sanguous martirum salmon christianorum the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church God didn't call us Christians to be winners or to be successful he just called us to be faithful and faithful to the very end I've been hearing for a few decades now that the church is dying but

the enemies of God had better hope not there's no place in the universe where the church is more lethal than the graveyard try it the grave is our country of birth we were born there secularism was born in the gentle shade of a Christian culture but Christians were conceived not in the bed of leisure we were conceived on a cross we were delivered in a tomb we were born in the dark we learned to speak on Pentecost while the world mocked us we took our first steps under the reign of the world Stones we were raised in the catacombs we were educated in the lion's mouth we became men at the stake do you imagine world you can just invent a few toys and make a few gadgets and propose a new philosophy and take over a few hundred college campuses and win a few

elections and confuse a few generations and we're just going to go away like that we've been called irrelevant since Calvary and we will be called irrelevant right up to the moment that the trumpet sounds there have been Christians your ancestors for whom it would have been easier to rope the Sun and turn it in reverse course then to turn these Christians from the course of Truth and honor they spoke the truth as unhesitatingly when the ax was suspended above their neck as when they spoke in the safety of their small gatherings they dwelt in their own countries but only as sojourners as Citizens they shared in all things with others and yet they endured all things as if they were foreigners they had a common table but they didn't have a common bed they were in the flesh but they didn't live after the flesh

they passed their days on Earth but they were citizens of Heaven they obeyed the prescribed laws of the land and at the same time they surpassed the laws by their lives they loved all men and were persecuted by all men they were in lack of all things and yet and yet they abounded in all things they were Dishonored and yet in their very Dishonored they were glorified they were evil spoken of and yet they were Justified they were revivaled reviled and yet they were blessed they were insulted and they in they they in turn repaid those insults with honor and respect they did good yet were punished as evildoers and when punished they rejoiced as if they were quickened into life they were assailed on every side yet those who hated them were always unable to assign any reason for their hatred stand forth champions

of Christ Paul and Peter and John and Stephen and Paulie carp and praxius and Phoebe and Antipas they quenched the violence of Fire out of weakness they were made strong others were tortured not accepting Deliverance that they might obtain a better Resurrection they were stoned sawn in two tempted put to death with the sword they went about in the poorest clothing destitute and Afflicted and ill-treated and there are many many more I've hardly left the first century o Prince of Darkness these are our heroes where are thine Nero might have taken our apostles might have taken Peter and Paul's lives but today we name our dogs Nero and our sons Paul and Peter and we are their descendants apostolics made of the same stuff filled with the same Spirit baptized in the same saving name Arise Church this is your heritage this is your legacy

we have outlasted all of that and we will again conclusion some years ago as a Seminary Student I went to the areopagus in Greece stood on the same rock formation near the Acropolis where 20 centuries before the Apostle Paul delivered a Stern warning to the Athenian philosophical guilt and on the day that I was there it was a cool Sunday morning just before Dawn I'd been asked to give a devotional to my fellow seminarians at daylight I was pretty nervous to give this devotion and then tourists started gathering around too so I was feeling pretty intimidated there I made it through the devotional and the group dissipated and I was left alone for a few minutes to explore the ancient Hill the Sun by now was now a few degrees up on the horizon and then church bells all across the city of Athens from

Borough to burtle began to ring Athens came to life the sound was almost deafening so loud and hauntingly beautiful thousand churches literally announced that it was Sunday the day that Christ arose from the grave 20 centuries before when Paul stood here there were no churches the city acknowledged its gods like Athena with stunning artistry and it was into this atmosphere that Paul a solitary Jew having not a single Monument except a wooden cross to point to as evidence of the truth that he spoke bearing only the words and testimony of his mouth he stood atop this same Hill and lectured the very religious Athenians he must have made quite a spectacle to behold that day indeed the philosophers made fun of him and called him a spermalogous or a babbler an insult they sneered smugly at a Jew who on that day seemed as far

away from relevances anyone could ever be the nearby Parthenon built an honor to Athena cast a menacing Shadow over Paul and his sermon concluded with the sound not of solemnity but the jeer of laughter he tried to warn the world when he said I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in one of his letters for Paul what the world esteemed to be the disgrace of his God was in fact the sacrament of man's salvation who there on that day could have guessed that only two centuries hence this insignificant Jew and his Lord would dominate this same city who then could have guessed that the Parthenon would soon be nothing more than a museum crumbling is a monument to ancient superstition I had merely given a devotional to a mostly sympathetic and mostly well-informed audience and I had found myself nervous on that

day it's hard to imagine what Paul would have felt he stood alone the only Christian in the city almost the only Christian in this part of the empire the God he worshiped was for the Athenians agnosticu the unknown God I've also visited the mammerteen prison in Rome the place where Paul is believed to have lived his final hours before he was taken to a block and beheaded this was indeed the place he was lowered through a hole the same hole through which guards would also use to slide buckets through for food and waste onto a stone dungeon floor 11 feet below the world the Apostle once roamed free was now reduced to a few feet of cold Earth his Circle of Friends once robust dwindled by the day as death hung overhead and then Paul died after the fashion of his master alone surrounded only

by strangers how satisfying would have done for Paul the man who lived between the lightning of the resurrection and the Thunder of his Lord's return to hear these church bells ringing and to know that Athens Christians nominal or otherwise now outnumber the worshipers of Athena roughly 3 million to zero come let us Market the great who had such burdens on the mind and toiled so hard and late to leave some Monument behind before descending the stairs to leave I took one last look around at Mars Hill when Paul was here stoics and the epicureans or the avant-garde the fashion makers of their day they were regarded as the future but as I took to the stairs listening to the Bells I could hear the voice of the Apostle whom men called tiny the man who received a revelation on the road to Damascus that he

would not die of old age I could hear him speaking in my mind just above the den of the scoffing audience where is the philosopher today where is the Scribe ground whereas the disputer of this world hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world and indeed ladies and gentlemen where are the epicureans and stoics today where are those religions young people never hit your wagon to a passing fad King Kings and kingdoms shall all pass away there's something about that name Jesus so I I go back to the beginning and remember Alex standing there being mocked his hand up towards the cross are there any Alex's today willing to stand alone the world makes pictures of you it mocks you but one day maybe one day they will Resurrect The testimony of your courage and now to the one who is able to

keep us from falling and to present us fullness before the presence of his glory with exceeding Joy it's the only wise God our savior be glory and majesty and dominion and Power both now and forever and it's only a matter of time before the Heavenly song that the ancient Christian Prophet John heard is fulfilled the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever endeavor stand to your feet Alex worship worship Him who alone sits upon the throne in glory we worship you we magnify you we give you praise and honor Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus I pray that we will Faithfully transmit this gospel to the Next Generation God help us give us wisdom and strength and courage in this hour to stand strong stand strong look the enemy in the face and continue

and persist and stand as the Apostle said wearing the full armor of God Hallelujah Lord I pray Lord that we would have strength in this hour that none of us would would become weak and pray to the enemy Lord we have withstood this before and give us strength again in Jesus name sing with me Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus there's just something about that name master save your your cheese sauce like the fragrance after the rain Jesus cheese let all heaven and Earth Proclaim Kings and kingdoms but there's there's something about come to the altar before you go home tonight come with your family or your friend pray for one another come and pray for one another pray for strength in this hour the helmet of salvation breastplate of righteousness Shield of Faith a sword of the spirit feet shot with the preparation of the Gospel