‘You Will Be Hated’

Suffering and persecution is the lot of the true believer:

Contemporary Christians in the West might still find it hard to believe what Jesus said 2000 years ago. He promised his followers that they would be hated and persecuted. He said this for example in John 15:18-19: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

And it is happening more and more today. I just did an interesting online search. I entered the phrase “UK police arrest preacher”. Now we know that there are plenty of Islamic hate preachers in the UK and throughout the West, so you might expect a few stories about them calling for the death of infidels to come from such a search.

But no, the results focused on CHRISTIAN preachers who were being harassed and arrested by the police. Here is just one such story from late last year:

A Christian pastor was arrested after commenting on Islam and affirming that sex is binary while street preaching outside Bristol University. After being assaulted by a member of the public, Dia Moodley was arrested by Avon and Somerset Police and held for 13 hours in a police cell for contrasting Christianity and Islam in response to a question. The arresting officer said Mr Moodley did this during Ramadan.

 

The investigation into Mr Moodley was dropped after legal representations were made to the police with the support of ADF UK, a faith-based legal advocacy organisation. Also with the help of ADF UK, Mr Moodley is pursuing a complaint against the police for his treatment by them, including for the destruction of his four signs, one of which included Bible text, under their instruction after his arrest.

 

Avon and Somerset Police has already apologised to Mr Moodley for instructing staff at Bristol University to dispose of the signs. Reacting to the incident, Mr Moodley said:

 

“Two-tier policing is sadly not a fiction or some conspiracy theory, it’s a reality that Christians in the UK have been experiencing for years. It shouldn’t be for the state to decide which religions and ideologies must not be discussed or critiqued in the public street. The result is the normalisation of a two-tier society where some beliefs and ideologies are valued and protected, while others are undermined and outlawed. The world is looking at the dismal state of free speech in the UK with shock. What happened to me reflects a wider trend of increasing state censorship in the UK and across the West.” https://adfinternational.org/en-gb/news/pastor-arrested-after-commenting-on-islam-while-street-preaching

Yesterday I wrote about a good friend of mine in the UK who has been dragged before the courts on multiple occasions. His crimes? He simply proclaims biblical truth about things like abortion, human sexuality and the like. For daring to publicly affirm his Christian faith, he keeps getting into trouble with the authorities: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/05/18/the-death-of-free-speech-in-the-uk/

But all this is not new. Opposition to the gospel, and Christians being persecuted not just by angry Christophobes, but even police and the powers that be, has happened often enough in the UK and elsewhere. Consider William and Catherine Booth and the Salvation Army of a century and a half ago. They knew all about this intense hatred and persecution.

As I said in an earlier piece:

They experienced persecution as a regular part of their work, yet kept on going. Indeed, just as always has been the case, they experienced demonic rage and bloody persecution coming straight out of the pit of hell. How else does one explain such horrible vitriol, scurrilous abuse, and ugly hatred? Consider a few snippets from one such volume (Trevor Yaxley, William & Catherine. Bethany House, 2003)…

 

“William and his helpers soon got used to the disruptions caused by drunken roughs during their open-air meetings…. They did not always come away from their open-air work unharmed. Anything opponents could find was thrown their way, and often they hit the mark. On many evenings, William would trudge the eight miles to his Hammersmith home, arriving weary and battle-scarred, his clothes stained with blood or rotten fruit and his body bruised. This was the price they had to pay as they sought to save the worst of sinners – a price they never considered too high.” (p. 125)

And again:

“By 1880 this holy Army was attracting severe opposition. Those who stood to lose the most from their success became their greatest enemies. Hotel and brothel owners faced falling profits as their previously thriving businesses began to suffer. The escalating conversion rate of many of their most loyal customers was plainly evident.” (pp. 177-178)

 

So these pub and brothel owners regularly recruited and organised violent gangs to assault and stop the Salvos from marching in the streets or holding their meetings. It was an all-out war, and there were many real casualties.

 

“Tragically greater injuries were also to follow. In Guildford that same year the wife of the corps officer was kicked to death. A fellow woman soldier was so severely beaten during the same parade that she also died some days later from the wounds she sustained. It is difficult to imagine this degree of persecution of Christians occurring in a ‘Christian’ nation such as Britain in the nineteenth century.

 

“In Whitechapel, East London, Salvation Army lasses were tied together with rope and pelted with live coals. It was not uncommon for parades heading for the evening meetings to be showered with tar and burning sulphur. ‘Blood and Fire’ became a reality for this army of God, unfortunately not only in the way originally foreseen.” (p. 183) https://billmuehlenberg.com/2012/09/24/they-will-hate-you/  

But it was not just drunkards and businesses that attacked the Booths because they were losing out at the preaching of the Salvos. The authorities also tended to side with the hooligans and troublemakers and side against the Booths. A few quotes from Roy Hattersley’s Blood and Fire (Doubleday, 1999, 2000) can be shared here. Speaking of the East London Christian Mission he writes:

Perhaps the Mission was the victim of its own success. For as well as reporting the vast expansion in its work, William Booth had to record what he described as constant ‘petty victimisation’. The details of the persecution made his description of the assaults sound like a brave understatement:

 

“If we opened the windows, mud and stones and occasional fireworks were thrown through. Consequently we had to sit and endure the stifling heat until it was impossible for delicate people to remain in the place. Sometimes trails of gunpowder were laid, the dress of one devoted sister was thus actually set on fire during the service.”

 

Perhaps more disturbing, ‘the open-air gatherings were harassed by the police and the landlords and frequenters of adjacent public houses’. The partnership between publicans and police officers was, over the years, to put William Booth and his followers in constant danger. When the roughs and publicans’ hired louts attacked the preachers, the police sometimes looked on with amused detachment. Occasionally they took the part of the assailants against their victims. But they rarely came to the defence of the persecuted evangelists until an outcry in the House of Commons forced reluctant Justices of the Peace to do their duty. The violence escalated week by week.

 

“From Whitechapel, for the last three Sundays, a band of brethren has gone out to labour on the Ratcliffe Highway. The neighbourhood is beyond comparison the foulest sink of moral corruption in the metropolis … Much opposition has been encountered: at first the persecutors contented themselves with ridiculing and mutilating the tracts which they were given, tearing them into shreds and throwing them over the speaker. The next Sunday, they threw the brother down three separate times: the Sunday following, potatoes, cabbage and other refuse was thrown at them. While Brother Rose was speaking, about one hundred Irish fell upon him … one young man, very well dressed, seized him by the throat, another struck him a heavy blow to the cheek.”

 

The police ‘compelled the preachers to desist, dragging them away and threatening to lock them up unless they went away. In obedience to the police, the brethren departed . . .’ (pp. 163-164)

Hattersley continues:

The pattern of violent opposition which was to stalk the Booths for thirty years was gradually being established. It was the product of several factors — brewers’ fears that the teetotal evangelists would reduce their trade; popular resentment at the uninvited intrusion into private lives; police impatience with behaviour which provoked violence in others. As William Booth’s campaigns gained momentum and became more successful, the reasons to hate him and his work multiplied. The only possible response was the soft answer and the turned cheek. ‘A young man came along and interrupted us . . . one of our brethren remonstrated with him . . . at which he threatened to knock the Brother down.’ William made an offer to arrange a prize fight — on the understanding that it was preceded by prayers. ‘Then a drunken man came up and, with curses, threatened to break up the meeting.’ William Booth ‘took hold of him and, drawing him to the centre of the meeting, said “Let us pray” and, falling on his knees, called on God to have mercy on the poor drunkard.’ The effects, at least according to William Booth, were spectacular. ‘When I arose, instead of the small congregation with which we had commenced, there was a large concourse of people.’

 

The opposition was, in its way, a tribute to William Booth’s success. At the end of the 1860s he was everywhere in the East End of London, and it was impossible to pass a public house without being urged to accept one of his pamphlets. His preachers were on every street corner and the sound of his hymns disturbed Sunday morning rest from Limehouse to Whitechapel. He would have been less than human not to rejoice at the success with which he did the Lord’s work and the distress he caused to the devil’s local representatives. In the heady atmosphere of conquest, he did not even pause to consider the risks of expanding more quickly than his resources allowed. Even if he had realised the dangers, he would still have rejected the idea of proceeding with caution. (p. 165)

Jesus and the disciples were heavily persecuted by mobs and by the authorities. So too were the Booths and the Salvation Army. So too increasingly all Western believers today. We were not only warned about this long ago in Scripture, but we have 2000 years of church history demonstrating and documenting this reality.

As one personal example, I recall perhaps 45 years ago when I was living in Holland, working with Youth With a Mission. Teams were evangelising in Amsterdam, with some praying on their knees in the notorious Red Light district. One Dutch policeman took his baton and cracked it on the head of a young YWAMer – for no reason at all. One can only explain this as an outburst of demonic hatred.

More and more we are seeing Christians in the West being fined, fired, arrested and jailed. As more and more nations and their leadership become increasingly secular and hostile to biblical Christianity, we will see more and more persecution, including violent onslaught and assaults.

That is the reality of the world we are living in. But if you protest, ‘I never experience any persecution,’ then maybe that is because you are not really living like a true, committed Christian! As the Apostle Paul clearly stated in 2 Timothy 3:12: “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”

[1964 words]