"If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you;on their part evil is spoken of, but on your part He is glorified."(I Peter 3:14)

Dr. Francis Schaeffer, who has been called the greatest Evangelical theologian of the last 100 years, warned that as the anarchy increased in our world due to moral relativism, that totalitarianism would rise to control the chaos. Schaeffer issued that warning over 30 years ago and said we had a brief window in which to preserve our religious freedoms. Dr. Schaeffer believed that the greatest contributing factor to the rise of totalitarianism was the fact that the Evangelical Church was accommodating to a growing humanist culture and not standing for Biblical truth.

"Nowhere is that more apparent than in the “Emergent Church Movement” and in the “Seeker-Friendly Movement,” but it is epidemic in the Evangelical culture as a whole. Tragically, what Schaeffer predicted would happen in the church and the culture is now happening before our eyes. Schaeffer stated that it did not matter whether or not the totalitarianism came from the left or the right because the results would be the same.

The words of Dr. Schaeffer reverberate in my mind, as I watch the rise of a global totalitarian state and the great apostasy that the Apostle warned about in II Thessalonians. For the most part the Evangelical Church in America and Europe is the Laodecian Church that Christ warned of in the Book of Revelation." [Paul McGuire]

It is this same Laodecian Church that existed in Nazi Germany before the Third Reich took control. The result of the Laodecian Church is the explosive growth of a humanist and world socialist government. This “Fourth Beast” which Daniel warned about will persecute true Bible believing Christians in America, and around the world - persecution in a manner that most Evangelical Churches and their leaders are unprepared for.

'Don't worry, before the tribulation comes you will be translated.'

Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch survivor of the Nazi Concentration Camps, and a lifelong missionary. Corrie was a believer in facing tribulation. She was one of the many people who were persecuted in concentration camps during World War II. Her family was murdered before her eyes, but though her life was threatened, God led her through that terrible time.

Corrie lived to testify all over the world of how God brought her out of that time of trouble. In an interview titled "Prepared for the Coming Tribulation", she shared the following plea for the saints to prepare for their faith to be tested. It serves today as a timely warning to the comfortable and complacent western church as it approaches the threshold of the endtime drama.

"We have failed. We should have made the people strong for persecution rather than telling them Jesus would come first. Tell the people how to be strong in times of persecution, how to stand when the tribulation comes,“ to stand and not faint.

There are some among us teaching there will be no tribulation, that the Christians will be able to escape all this. These are the false teachers that Jesus was warning us to expect in the latter days. Most of them have little knowledge of what is already going on across the world. I have been in countries where the saints are already suffering terrible persecution. In China, the Christians were told that they would be" raptured." Then came a terrible persecution. Millions of Christians were tortured to death. Later I heard a Bishop from China say, sadly, I feel I have a divine mandate to go and tell the people of this world that it is possible to be strong in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are in training for the tribulation, but more than sixty percent of the Body of Christ across the world has already entered into the tribulation. There is no way to escape it."

With the words of Job ringing in our ears, let us stand and proclaim the glory of our God ~

"Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him", for I know that to all who overcome, He shall give the crown of life.