An organisation that supports people with legal counsel who have got themselves on the wrong side of the law for whatever reason told me that of the six cases they are currently working with, five of them involves Christians. These Christian people are being set up to be knocked down by others who, in the main, are 'church christians' - whatever they are? Church people cannot stand true believers; the children of the bondwoman have never liked the children of the free woman, (Gal.4:21-31).
They have always persecuted them; and where this is seen most clearly is within the ranks of the church. Can you imagine a "Christian" congregation working to evict a Gospel minister and his family from their home? That happens - it is happening today in 2012, and happened to us in 1993! Can you imagine a Gospel minister's wife being so badly treated that she ends up in psychiatric hospital for four months, and he had to take time off work to look after the family, which includes a handicapped child? That happened in 2011 in NI! Can you imagine the use that unscrupulous people have made of a minister's family in a bid to get at the minister? That happened to us in the 1980s, and again in 1992; and it is happening to ministers in 2012 in NI! Can you imagine a minister and his wife being afraid to answer the telephone? Is it possible that their hearts miss a beat when the phone rings or when the door bell goes?
How do you explain the growing number of Gospel ministers who are having to take time off because of being unable to cope with the bullying that they are experiencing within their congregations and denominations? Why does no one in church leadership recognise that there is a massive problem within the churches caused by the number of ministers who are forced to leave their work?
This is going on in NI, and all because the children of the bond woman are persecuting the children of the free woman. the Gospel is not welcome in many churches today because those churches have become used to a very weak presentation of the Gospel, and have been lulled to sleep by it. They have received a small dose of the real thing, and have thereby been inoculated against the real thing. They hear the Gospel, don't like what they hear, but know enough to know that it is what they do not want under any circumstances.
When the Gospel of Christ arrives in some churches, the offense of the Cross intensified and made very visible. Would that the church authorities saw exactly what is going on, and took the right action - and it is not to dismiss the minister!
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