Christian? Time to choose boldly

"If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you."– John 15:19

What's going on in our world today?

Across the planet, we see people being faced with death because of their faith – from Europe to Africa to the Middle East. Roving bands of hate-filled marauders rape, loot, torture, plunder and kill in the name of Allah – with a special focus on Jews and Christians.

That hate has come to the United States, too. It visited us on Sept. 11, 2001, and drew us into wars that proved fruitless to stop it.

But that hate comes in other forms as well.

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It's expressing itself right now in America in judicial tyranny that coerces believers to involve themselves in activity their faith deems evil and immoral.

It started not long ago with an idea that seemed preposterous – so unpopular that no politician of either party could support it: Same-sex marriage, or, in the double-speak of willful sinfulness, "marriage equality."

Overwhelmingly, both houses of Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act. It was signed into law by a Democrat president who cared more about his own popularity and poll numbers than right or wrong. But that didn't stop the movement. Referenda and propositions placed on ballots saw 31 out of 31 states vote to maintain marriage as the union of one man and one woman. One after another, those popular initiatives – the express will of the people – were overturned by federal judges who arguably had no jurisdiction in state matters. But that didn't matter.

It was a form of coercion, of intimidation – just like the terrorists, but without guns.

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Pretty soon, anyone who didn't support same-sex marriage was characterized as a hater. And now the Supreme Court is on the verge of codifying that opinion into "the law of the land."

Believers in the One True God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have a choice before them. You can listen to the world and conform to it or reject the world in favor of God.

Deuteronomy 30:15-16 says, "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; In that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it."

It's a life and death choice.

Isaiah 5:20 says, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"

These are the times in which we are living. They're here.

Luke 12:4-5 says, "And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him."

Men and women of conscience are being ordered today by federal judges to participate in same-sex marriages, to grant the licenses for these ceremonies. It's happening in Alabama today – a state that overwhelmingly voted to oppose this practice, a state whose legislature and governor opposed this practice, a state whose own Supreme Court opposed it.

Already, photographers and videographers and florists and bakers have lost their livelihoods for choosing simply not to participate what they see clearly as in opposition to God's laws.

It seems almost like a cliché after all these years to mention abortion and how that, too, became the law of the land. Some 60 million innocent lives have since been snuffed out – quietly and with the full blessing and protection of a nation founded on the principle of state protection of "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" and whose constitutional preamble specifically protects the rights of the nation's "posterity," which, by the way, means those not yet born.

It's a time of choosing for those who call themselves "Christians."

How are you going to choose? Will you choose good and life or evil and death?

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