Persecution?

David Limbaugh has written an amazing book about Christian persecution – not in Sudan, not in China, but right here in the United States.

It begins with the story of a judge threatening students in a public high school with arrest and incarceration for six months if they dare mention the name of Jesus.

And the horror stories of anti-Christian bias, censorship and official intimidation continue throughout in his best-selling “Persecution.”

I had the pleasure of interviewing the WorldNetDaily columnist and author on my radio program yesterday. He explained how Bible-believing Christians in America are very close to being guilty of new “hate crimes” merely for practicing their faith.

This is how it started once before – in Rome.

Do you know what the justification for the systematic murder of Christians was in ancient Rome under Nero?

The first-century Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus provides some insight in his classic work, “Annals.”

Here’s a translated excerpt from “Annals” 15:44, describing Emperor Nero’s reaction to the burning of Rome:

But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular.

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.

Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

Notice that Christians were charged with “hatred of mankind.” Isn’t that interesting? They were executed for a “hate crime.” This is where it all began.

We might not be illuminating our streets at night yet with the burning flesh of crucified Christians as they did in Nero’s time, but our political culture is most definitely slouching toward Rome. We may not be feeding Christians to wild animals in the coliseum, but the kind of officially sanctioned bigotry that leads to holocaust is growing.

As Limbaugh documents in “Persecution,” Christians are the target of bias and bigotry in our culture today on a scale unprecedented since the fall of Rome.

This is the real “hate crime” – if there is such a thing.

If this isn’t enough to wake Christians in America from their complacency and misguided trust in government, I give up. It’s time, brothers and sisters, to put your faith in God, not in Caesar, not in Nero – not in government.

---

Autographed copies of David Limbaugh’s “Persecution” are available exclusively through ShopNetDaily.