Mix leftwing governments with out of control litigation, homosexual activism, and hatred of God’s truth, including his design for marriage and family, and what do you get? The end of the public proclamation of biblical Christianity. Throughout the Western world we see this happening on a daily basis.
Indeed, politically correct leftist governments are aiding and abetting the two groups most actively at war against Christianity and religious freedom: the radical Islamists and the radical homosexualists. With all sort of pseudo laws and legislation being pulled out of the hat, this is set to worsen.
Indeed, the proliferation of religious vilification laws, hate crimes legislation, and so on, is guaranteeing that the public proclamation of Christian truth claims will increasingly be stamped out. Whether the believer seeks to proclaim moral, social or theological truths, to do so in public is to risk facing the heavy hand of the law.
Examples of this are everywhere to be found, with two new cases of this just reported in Australia in the past day. The first case involves a Queensland political candidate who sought to affirm the fundamental truth that children deserve a mother and a father.
To affirm what most people know by common sense and what is backed up by a massive mountain of social science data is not enough for our radical social engineers. Now we have a lesbian couple suing Wendy Francis of Family First for daring to state the obvious.
A lesbian mother is dragging Francis to the anti-discrimination tribunal for her remarks that children deserve a mum and a dad, and to deliberately deprive them of both is akin to child abuse. The lesbian complained about “the bigotry and hatred stirred up by people like Wendy Francis”.
There you have it folks. To stand up for a child’s most basic and most urgent of human rights, to have his or her own mother and father is nothing but “bigotry and hatred”. But of course for the radical homosexual activists, anything that even remotely questions the homosexual lifestyle is seen as such.
And with hate crime laws and similar legislation being passed all over the place, to simply speak common sense and majority opinion, let alone biblical truth, is now considered hatred and a criminal offence. And much of the mainstream media is happy to join in on this witch-hunt.
Indeed, given such biased coverage from the MSM, Francis had to issue a press release today to give her side of the story. It reads in part:
“I hold no personal animosity against homosexuals. The way people choose to conduct their lives is up to them and I will defend the right of every Australian to live according to their personal beliefs as long as their choices do not infringe upon the rights and choices of other Australians or the nation as a whole.
“It is the latter part of the previous sentence that leads me to stand for marriage as it has traditionally been viewed. I believe that the foundation of Australia is strong families including marriage between a man and a woman. I furthermore believe that the best interests of the child are served by being raised by a mother and father. It is for this reason I stood against Queensland’s surrogacy laws and it is for this reason that, if elected, I will be a voice in the senate to protect marriage.
“I do not believe that upholding marriage or preventing children being raised in homosexual families is discrimination. We can’t govern Australia by legislation based on pleasing each group who wants things their way. I believe we must stand firm on principles and values that are the best for the good of the nation. Few Australians would – if given the choice – choose to forgo being raised with a mother and a father. If we would choose this for ourselves, how much more important is it that we make the same choices on behalf of children who cannot speak for themselves at birth? For this reason I will also work towards measures to strengthen marriage relationships and promote stable families.
“Having an opinion is not homophobic. Having an opinion is not discriminatory. Having an opinion is a part of democracy and by standing for the senate I am a part of the democratic process that gives every Queenslander the chance to agree with me or not.”
Another story just reported is equally troubling for committed Christians who see the high priority of publically proclaiming the gospel of Christ. It involves a street preacher at the Gold Coast who was told to stop by the police. Details seem to be a bit sketchy, and there seem to be varying accounts.
But evidently some police said this preaching was illegal, and a permit was needed to do it, while other police said it was fine, and no permit was needed. So just who exactly is correct remains to be seen. But this appears to be just one more example of Christians meeting governmental resistance as they seek to openly share their faith.
The bottom line with all this is as follows: a Labor-Green government will likely result in the floodgates opening on cases like this. It is most likely that we will see this occurring exponentially. More and more Christians will be turned into criminals as they simply seek to speak biblical truth in the public arena.
Critics will complain, ‘yeah, but these are just two isolated incidents’. If that in fact was the case, then yes, we could all just chill out. But it seems every week I am documenting more such cases. It is the cumulative effect of all this anti-Christian bigotry which slowly but slowly builds up, and soon enough full-strength persecution is on the way.
And there will be plenty of ways that these secular leftist governments will seek to silence these Christian voices: fines, imprisonment, being fired from one’s employment, and so on. It will become increasingly difficult for believers to simply make a living and be faithful to the gospel in such an environment.
While I have normally been a bit suspicious of those seeking to pinpoint when and where the alarming events described in Revelation 13:16-17 might occur, I am beginning to see that the direction we are now moving in the West may well make such a scenario increasingly likely and probable – even in our own lifetime.
Whether or not we are in actual end times, there is no question at all that a war has been declared against those who bravely and faithfully seek to proclaim biblical truth in the public square. Each new day sees the great good of religious freedom being whittled away.
We cannot say we have not been warned. Indeed, Jesus said as much two millennia ago: “I have told you this, so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you” (John 16:2-4). So expect the persecution to increase in the coming weeks and months – unless we now take a stand against it.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/10/2979275.htm
http://wendy4senate.com/2010/08/clarification-of-comments-by-wendy-francis/
http://networkedblogs.com/6Is45
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