Prepare to Be Treated Like First Century Christians in Rome | thebereancall.org

TBC Staff - EN

DEAR CHURCHES IN AMERICA: PREPARE TO BE TREATED LIKE 1ST CENTURY CHRISTIANS IN ROME

The United States Supreme Court may soon liberate the biblically conservative church from old "prejudices" that should have long ago been "jettisoned," forcing it into "rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity," in the words of a recent writer in The New York Times.

Homosexuality must be removed from the "sin list" and…traditional marriage proponents must be forced "to do things they don't want to do." Sadly, this crusade will be like the Marxist "liberation" movements that promised to "free" people, but really were about control and suppression.

The culmination may come as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on same-sex marriage cases beginning April 28. By July 1 the Court possibly will issue an official ruling regarding the constitutional right to homosexual marriage.

The Court's decision may impact the form of biblically based churches dramatically. Churches that hold to a strict and conservative interpretation of the Bible's teaching about gender and marriage may find themselves "Romanized".

The elites of first century Rome would not allow the church an institutional presence in society. "The Christian churches were associations which were not legally authorized, and the Roman authorities, always suspicious of organizations which might prove seditious, regarded them with jaundiced eye…"

In our time this means local churches that do not embrace same-sex marriage would find their legal status shaky or non-existent, as well as parachurch groups, conservative Christian colleges, church-based humanitarian agencies, and all other religious institutions – Christian and otherwise – supporting the traditional view of marriage.

Journalist Ben Shapiro notes that there is already a movement on the state level "to revoke non-profit status for religious organizations that do not abide by same-sex marriage." The Supreme Court's decision could make churches refusing to comply "private institutions engaging in commerce," and therefore subject to laws already in place. Refusal to perform a same-sex wedding would put a church out of business.

Current trends seem to flow against conservative religious institutions. All the elites that set and propagate cultural consensus are aligned in support of same-sex marriage – the Entertainment Establishment, Information Establishment, Academic Establishment, and Political Establishment. Much of the legal community is on board. Despite a tower of briefs supporting same-sex marriage, there are no major law firms willing to argue against it, reported the New York Times April 11.

Big business has also rallied. Apple and Wal-Mart were among the major corporations opposing moves in Indiana and Arkansas to secure freedom for business owners to follow their religious convictions. Reuters reported that 379 corporations including Google, American Airlines, Goldman Sachs, and Johnson & Johnson have signed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting same-sex marriage.

It's not surprising, therefore, that public support leans toward same-sex marriage. When Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican presidential candidate, told a CNN interviewer that he supported the right of states to determine marriage policies, Jake Tapper, the CNN host, informed Rubio that he is "the candidate of yesterday" since polls show 61 percent of GOP voters under 30 support same-sex marriage.

Previously, I wrote in The Christian Post about the process by which the prophetic voice is silenced in a culture: Marginalization, caricaturization, vilification, criminalization, elimination.

We have reached the stage of vilification – conservative Christians are now regarded by the consensus establishments as the villains in "transformed" America. The Supreme Court may well take us to the criminalization stage.

The biblical church therefore must learn to live as the first century Christians did in Rome.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/dear-churches-in-america-prepare-to-be-treated-like-1st-century-christians-in-rome-138025/#E85Lu6eGDsrct7A9.99