Growing up and going to various Christian youth groups, I always heard one common theme that made me scoff. The leader would get up in front and say something to the extent of, ‘What if someone from the government came to your high school and ordered all the Christians to report? ‘ .

In college I would hear, ‘What if someone came to your office and asked the boss to identify any Christian workers they have. Would you be among that group?’

I scoffed at that for two reasons, one is that this is the United States.  The other reason I scoffed is that I was taught, it was wrong to wear your faith on your sleeve like the Pharisees wore it on their outside (Matthew 23:27).

Back in the 1980s, I found it preposterous that such discrimination/ prejudice against Christians would happen in the United States. I would tell myself that this is not China or the Soviet Union where people are called out for their religious beliefs. We don’t have re-education camps. The government was not looking to silence faith in God! Discrimination and prejudice against people of Christian faith seemed to me to be everything that Ronald Reagan stood against!

As I said, I also never thought it was appropriate to, wear Jesus as a badge. Though I remember hearing stories of people who wore huge “?” mark pins on their clothes to strike up conversations of faith and spirituality., it was not often. Most of the time my church just talked about people doing good things instead of witnessing in such garish ways. Today, I have a couple Jesus t-shirts that I sometimes wear absent-mindedly. I don’t wear them to stimulate conversation or provoke a reaction or get a rise out of anyone, I wear my “I like Mike Pence for Vice President” or a Trump 2024 t-shirt for that!

However, in the past 13 years people of faith are actually starting to see real discrimination and prejudice arise, here!

Almost EVERYDAY on Christianpost.com and other news sites, someone else is getting sued due to having a Bible-Study on their own property or because their faith does not allow them to recognize gay weddings or a school district is being sued for having a Bible Study. Under Obama, people actually went to jail and lost their businesses. Under Trump, people were getting physically attacked for identifying as loving the Judeo-Christian ethics that made this country great. No one attacked Sandra Day-O’Connor or even Clarence Thomas like Kavanaugh was attacked, yet everyday there is a new Baronelle Stutzman or Jack Philips or Sweet Cakes By Melissa. I believe under Joe Biden there will be more.

Now, I am not a doomsayer but I agree with Hal Lindsey (author of the book, The Late, Great Planet Earth) and watch his show, The Hal Lindsey Report, regularly. At least I did when he still had the news studio. He has given some scary statistics about how much closer we are getting to the Rapture and how much worse the world is getting. Many others share his perspective. Bill Weise in his book, 23 Minutes in Hell (2010) , also said that Jesus told him that He was coming very soon (two times)! Jim Bakker has even said that Trump was chosen to prepare people for the end times (http://deadstate.org/jim-bakker-trump-was-chosen-by-god-to-prepare-christians-for-the-end-times/)!

Are all of these valid testimonies?? I don’t know. Didn’t people worry about the same changes in society 100 years ago??? I don’t know. did the same tings happen 150 years ago, but now statistics are more accessible and reporting more immediate? I do not know. But I know that as time keeps moving into the future, we ARE getting closer to that time. I realize that from my limited time I have been on Earth, things have gotten worse and weirder.

We are not to worry about if the Rapture will happen tomorrow or the next day, but be always be living a life in harmony with and in relationship to the Master of the Universe. It is NOT for sometime in the future, we are to allow the Kingdom of God to flourish within and among us, now and tell others about Him—whatever the political or legal consequences.

John 10:10b, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”.

———————————————–W.