Can I Deny Being a Christian to Escape Persecution?

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I think this conversation is desperately needed just because it really does seem like most

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American Christians are totally unprepared for any sort of serious persecution.

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And certainly some of it's going on right now, but I think, you know, I'm talking on a more wide scale,

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I just don't think people are ready for it and people just have not thought through these issues.

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People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio. Salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

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Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

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The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty

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God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

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God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the

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Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us. Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

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We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll answer the age -old question, can

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I deny being a Christian to escape persecution? Now as we get started on this episode,

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Tim, what Bible verse do you have to read for us today? Matthew 10, 32 -33 says that,

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Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men,

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I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven. You know, sometimes,

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Tim, I've got to be honest with you, sometimes we'll start an episode where we're asking a certain question and then you'll read a

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Bible verse that's supposed to obviously relate to that question in some way.

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I mean, sometimes, I'm sure there's been times where we've done an episode where we've started out that way and, you know, the

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Bible verse doesn't necessarily outright answer the question for us immediately, but I've got to say,

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Tim, it's really hard sometimes to try and make these episodes, you know, make the questions sound more complicated than they actually are sometimes.

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It's really hard to do that when you have Bible verses that just seem to be so plainly obvious that it's like,

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I just don't even, like, what else do we need to say at this point? You know, like, if the answer is, can

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I deny being a Christian to escape persecution, what else do you say? Beyond what

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God has already said, right? Jared Yeah, I think for a lot of people, it's just a lot more complicated than what it actually is.

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And so, you know, I think there's a certain kind of person that refuses to accept that the Bible has any moral obligations on it whatsoever, and it just kind of reduces to pragmatism, essentially.

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So… Tim Yeah, yeah, it really does. And, you know, and I can, you know,

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I think a lot of people, what they do with these kinds of conversations is at the end of the day, they just, they, like, it's almost as if they totally ignore what they know or what they know to be true and instead, like, only think about things through the lens of their emotions.

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Because that's the only way that I can even, you know, comprehend someone hearing a

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Bible verse like that and then, you know, saying, like, hey, as a person who claims to be a

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Christian, the best thing for me to do morally is to lie and say that I am not a

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Christian if it means that I'm going to be killed because I'm going to be leaving, you know, this responsibility behind and that responsibility behind.

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And so, you know, and I can understand it from a certain perspective, meaning, you know, like, the

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Bible says that our hearts are deceitful above all things, and so, we're constantly tempted to, you know, we're constantly tempted to want to be lied to and think emotionally and be irrational and not trust in what

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God has said, but, you know, but then that doesn't make, that doesn't mean it's right. That just means, like, we're tempted to do that and I just, it's hard to talk about this subject in any way that tries to take seriously the person who says, well, there's a time where God would be honored by you lying and saying that you're actually not a

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Christian based on what the Bible says. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people, they definitely, when they're thinking about topics like this, they're filtering it through a lens that God is love, essentially.

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So, a lot of it is they're thinking with their emotions and then I think if they're doing anything theological at all, one of the things that they're often doing is they're filtering these kind of discussions through their limited knowledge of who

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God is in general. So, it may be for them that they know very little about what the

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Bible says in general and they know very little about God, but then what they've been told is that if they walk an aisle or pray a prayer, they're going to be saved and then basically they're like, period, the end and they can't lose their salvation anyway.

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And I mean, you know, there's part of that that's obviously true, but not maybe in the way that they're thinking. And then, you know, they go from there to essentially think about who

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God is to them and God is basically just this big loving daddy who understands how things are hard and he's forgiving.

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And so, in their mind, God, who he is in terms of his nature, is he's loving and he's forgiving, period, the end.

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So, then when they answer questions like this, if something just seems too hard or mean or the entailments of it are ghastly, then they basically just conclude from that that God would understand if they just can't really do that thing that they're supposed to do in general.

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Petey Yeah, it seems like there's no room at all for any sort of like, God is holy or God is just, you know?

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Jared Right. Petey So, it seems like they're totally anemic. I mean, certainly, you know, God is love, but then like, there's more to God's character than just that.

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Jared Right, right. So, I mean, what this question came about is that I was asking some questions related to, you know, the next scheduled pandemic that we're going to have that should be coming shortly.

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So, I was basically asking, you know, true or false, true Christians should be willing to risk going to jail in order to go to church during the next scheduled, you know, quote unquote, pandemic or whatever.

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So, true Christians, you know, true or false, should true Christians be willing to risk going to jail in order to go to church this next time around?

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So, you know, did we – like, the question is basically, did we learn anything from the last one, right? So, did we learn anything from this last one, and then are we willing to suffer a little bit this next time around?

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So, have we – did we get it all out of our system on round one, and now, you know, are we ready to finally suffer for the

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Lord in any meaningful way? And you had a lot of interesting comments on that. And, you know, one of them was from a lady who was essentially saying, hey, that she's pregnant right now, and she has three kids to take care of, and if she goes to jail, then, you know, there will be no one left to take care of the kids and all that.

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So, then, in her case, she may have to really think about it because it might be too hard for her to, you know, make that kind of commitment, but maybe she'll figure it out.

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And so, that kind of provoked me to think about just a ridiculous, like, scenario.

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So, I just wanted to amp it up, you know, because when you think about, like, going to church and getting persecution for going to church,

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I wanted to just bring it into, like, the full -scale martyr situation and see how people would respond to that.

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So, the situation I came up with was a pregnant mother of four is faced with a choice to renounce her faith or face death shortly after her husband's killing, essentially.

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So, the scenario is her husband just got killed for not renouncing his faith, and she's being given the same choice.

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Either you renounce the faith or you die, right? And so, in her case, she's pregnant, and she has three other kids or whatever.

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And, basically, if she, you know, if she refuses to renounce her faith, both her and her unborn baby would perish, leaving her other children without care.

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So, what should she do? And then the options I gave at that point were, you know, one, be faithful unto death, two, renounce her faith, and then three, pretend to renounce her faith.

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So, pretend to renounce her faith. Petey So, it's like be faithful unto death, you know, renounce the faith, and then below that, renounce the faith, parenthesis, lie.

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And I mean, a surprising amount of people, they actually pick that pretend to renounce their faith as if it were, like, a realistic thing.

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So, part of what we're trying to ask in this kind of question is, we're trying to ask, is there a difference, essentially, between renouncing your faith and pretending to renounce it under pressure in order to escape persecution?

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Petey So, I guess as we think about that, the title question, you know, what would your answer be?

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Can I deny being a Christian to escape persecution? Jared I mean, absolutely not.

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Petey No, no. I mean, yeah, I think as you read through, you know, Matthew 10, 32 -33,

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I mean, it's about as clear as you possibly can get. Everyone who acknowledges… Petey Read it again for everyone.

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Read it again for everyone. Jared I got a few. I read a few here. Petey Okay, yeah, let's hear them. Jared Matthew 10, 32 -33, everyone who acknowledges me before men,

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I will also acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. But everyone who denies me before men, I will also deny before my

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Father who is in heaven. So, I mean, that seems about as black as white as it can possibly get. And really, that is the, you know, fountainhead for all the rest of the scriptural teaching on this in general.

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And there's, I mean, there's just a lot in the Bible that addresses this kind of topic. So, 2

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Timothy 2, 11 -13, the saying is trustworthy for if we have died with Him, we also live with Him.

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If we endure, we also reign with Him. So, the idea of enduring in the Christian life is all connected with this idea of not denying the faith.

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But if we endure, it says, we will also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He will also deny us.

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If we are faithless, He remains faithful for He cannot deny Himself. So, I mean, God in terms of His very character,

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He can't deny Himself because He's a God of truth in that way. And He's going to be faithful to what He says

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He's going to do. And what does He say He's going to do? Well, we already know. If we deny Him, He's going to deny us.

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That's the way it works. And so, He's going to be faithful to His character and do what He says He's going to do. Revelation 2 .13,

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I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, yet you hold fast to My name. So, like this whole idea of holding fast to His name and not denying

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Him. It says, you hold fast to My name, and you did not deny My faith, even in the days of Antipas, My faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.

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And then, you know, I mean, you have the whole, you know, Luke 9 .23,

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and He said to them, if anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.

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So, the whole idea of the Christian life is we confess that Jesus is Lord. That means, like, we're making a pledge of allegiance to Him.

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We're saying, You're my Lord. And what we're supposed to do is we're supposed to deny ourself, not deny Him. And then, if you want to know evidence that we're actually

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Christians in the Christian life, we're going to endure faithfully to the end, and we're not going to deny the

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Lord. And then, if we do deny Him, it says, you know, He can't deny

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Himself. So, if He's going to be faithful to Himself in that way. So, I think that's just one of those things that, one of those, you know, areas in the

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Bible where it just shows that 21st century

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American church isn't ready for persecution because we haven't even worked out some of the basic things here. No, not at all.

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Not at all. I mean, can you imagine if, you know, the early church was made up of the same people that make up the 21st century

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Christian American church, at least? You know, like, I mean, they were getting fed to lions.

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And we're talking about, hey, I can't, you know, I can't, I need to think about whether I can risk going to jail because I've got children at home and I'm pregnant with another one.

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Well, I think that exposes a few different flaws, and you've, I mean, you've touched on some of them.

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Like, number one, just in general, I think we're dominated by a fear of man rather than of God.

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You know, but another one that I think we haven't touched on yet is just, like, we're not ready for persecution just in the sense that, like, we don't actually trust that our, it seems like at least, we don't actually trust our brothers and sisters in Christ to take care of our family in our absence.

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I mean, I just wonder if people even realize that that is actually a responsibility of the local church, because, you know, like, if I were personally to go to jail for my faith in some way, whether it's just straight up like, hey, you're going to jail because you're a

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Christian, or it's, you know, you're going to jail because you went to church in the middle of our pandemic that we had going on, you know,

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I would fully trust that my church would take care of my family in my absence.

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And I would, and not even just a trust, I would expect them to. Pete Right.

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Terry Because, like, we're told, we're commanded to bear one another's burdens and, you know, to give to any who have need.

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And, you know, if I were to be, if I were to be killed or something, the church is commanded to take care of the widows and the orphans.

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And so, it seems like we just don't, like, beyond just the fear of man rather than of God, it seems like we don't even understand that the church is actually, it's not just this thing you go to on Sunday.

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It's not just a big light show, you know, that you, that you experience every

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Sunday and then try to leave a few minutes early so you can beat all the traffic like it's a rock concert. It's actually a family of brothers and sisters in Christ who have all been redeemed because of Christ's blood who are not only worshiping

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God, but they're also loving neighbor as themselves and bearing one another's burdens.

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So, it just seems like from a persecution perspective, we don't, I mean, it almost seems like there's no groundwork laid to prepare us in any way spiritually for any sort of serious persecution.

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Jared Yeah, that's definitely true. I mean, I think when you look around at the American church right now, not only do we not have any expectations of ourself in general as it relates to just our basic commitment to the lordship of Christ in our life at all, it seems like we don't have much of an ecclesiology or much of an understanding of what the church is there for also as well.

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So, I mean, you can ask this question in a variety of ways and, you know, whatever controversial question we'll ask online, typically it's the same kind of people who are making the same kind of allowances for the same kind of faithlessness in situations where Christianity might actually have to cost them something.

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So, it doesn't really matter. I mean, it doesn't really matter how you ask the question. You can ask the question in a wide variety of ways.

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But essentially, I mean, when you think about the kind of question that we're asking right now in general, the question we're asking is basically the question, does

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Christ's lordship demand anything from the individual believer at all? Like, in an absolute way, right?

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Like, does saying, Jesus is my lord, does that have any entailments whatsoever?

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Does it restrict, like, your freedom in any way? Does it make any kind of absolute demands on you whatsoever in the

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Christian life? And I think for the vast majority of professing Christians in America, there's no absolute demands that are made upon the

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Christian at all. Like, in that statement, right? So, if Jesus is lord, like, there's no real demands that are made from that other than you just need to say,

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I'm a sinner, please forgive me. Other than that, I mean, and you may not even have to do that so long as you have sentimental family members who want to think the best about where you're going despite the fact that you're showing no evidence of being a

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Christian at all. But, like, in the minds of many American Christians, essentially, there's no demands that are made at all from that basic statement that Jesus is lord.

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So, any kind of commands that God has are basically viewed by the vast majority of people as being entirely optional commands that you may want to try to follow so long as it seems reasonable, it's not going to cost you anything, and you don't have something better to do and everything else.

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So, it's the same group of people that, you know, basically will look at questions like this and they're going to respond in a similar way once Christianity or the basic entailments of the

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Lordship of Christ begin to cost anything. So, part of it's that. You know, part of it, on the other hand, is a lot of things that you mentioned in that we don't understand our responsibilities to our church body as well.

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So, for most people, they do go to church, they go to their rock concert or whatever they're going to, and they're going to sit there, they're going to listen to a few songs and get their feels on with these emotional songs about Jesus being their boyfriend or whatever else.

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So, they're going to get that and then they're going to listen to their little planned speech and that's going to be the extent of it.

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And then, they don't really think in terms of any responsibilities that they have towards their family members.

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I mean, so you say, hey, if I were to go to jail, like if you were to go to jail, you would fully expect that your church family would take care of you based on the kind of church family that you're going to at the moment.

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But I think for the vast majority of people, they don't understand that church members have any responsibilities to themselves, to other people.

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I mean, just think about the controversy that J .D. Greer got in by rebuking people for getting to church 10 minutes late and leaving 10 minutes early.

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I mean, they don't have any responsibilities to anyone in that kind of framework. But I mean, the Bible, the way the Bible speaks about your responsibility to your faith family,

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I mean, it's pretty stark. And if you have this world's goods and you see your brother in need and you don't give them the things that are needful to him, essentially you say, to part in peace, be warm and filled, how does the love of God abide in you?

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So when you think about that, like we live very individualistic kind of lives with little expectations about the actual responsibilities that we have for each other.

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But I mean, when the early church was formed, post -Pentecost, you have 3 ,000 people come into faith, they began to sell their houses and their lands and their properties in order to take care of people.

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And we may very quickly be in a situation where we're having to think like that. I need to sell a car in order to take care of my family members.

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I need to sell a house in order to take care of my family member. We've got to get creative. We need to start doing a yard sale and start selling all the junk.

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So we're not even thinking in those terms, and we don't even think about the church in that kind of way because it's just such a watered -down perspective of what we're even doing as Christians, you know, individually and as Christians together, for sure.

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Petey Right, right. Now, I know there's going to be, I know there's a lot of people screaming at the screen right now saying, well, what about Peter?

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What about Peter? You know, he denied, he denied, he denied three times. And I was planning on asking you that probably a little later in the episode, but I figure it might be good just to go ahead and talk about, you know, what's going on there.

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I mean, you know, does the fact that Peter did, you know, he did deny Christ three different times in the span of like a few hours, basically, you know, is that grounds to say, hey, it, you know, this is like a thing that Christians can do.

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They can deny Christ if it means they're going to, if it means they're going to be killed, basically, or they're going to be persecuted in some way.

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Or was, you know, was it like Peter, that's like a special instance that's going on there because Christ is still, you know,

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Christ is still alive at this point. You know, how should we view like just your average everyday person who is, who denies the faith at the threat of being killed compared to Peter denying

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Christ at the threat of, you know, potentially being crucified himself? Jared Yeah, well, whatever you do with Peter, what you don't want to do is use

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Peter's example as a way of giving an individual permission to actively in their mind make excuses for allowing, make excuses for denying the faith like actively in that way.

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Like meaning, like there's any number of heinous sins that a Christian can commit that God obviously will forgive them from, but then

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I'm always worried about the kind of Christian who looks at examples of notorious sins in the Bibles that individuals have committed and then they look at that as license to, like in a high hand, in a bold way to commit those same sins themselves.

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So an example of that would be something like, you know, David with his committing adultery and murdering of Uriah.

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So if you have a Christian who's looking at you and he's saying, hey, God forgave David of his adultery and murder, so I'm going to go murder someone and commit adultery because God will forgive me.

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That kind of individual is not really even in the same situation as David at all at that point.

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Does that make sense? Like meaning, meaning, like it's a very difficult, I mean, it's a very different situation to be in like David's situation or Peter's situation where if you're

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Peter, like imagine you're Peter, Peter went into the encounter saying there's no way I will deny you.

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I will not deny you, right? So he went into that encounter with the full intention of saying, if everyone else denies you,

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I won't deny you. And the Lord looks at him and basically says, hey, you know, before the –

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You will deny me the most. You will deny me the most out of all of them. You know, so like there's lessons to be learned, like pride comes before a fall.

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Like, you know, there's lessons learned about Jesus was asking them to stay up and pray with him and they wouldn't stay up and pray with him.

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So they weren't prepared for that moment. They weren't taking that moment seriously. They were filled with pride and thinking that they were going to, you know, do better than what they did.

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I mean, pretty much all of them fell away that night. They stumbled at that night, except for John, essentially.

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So John was about the only one of, I mean, the other, you know, 10 of the other ones ran too, so they all did the same kind of thing.

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They all abandoned him in that moment. And so part of it's that. I mean, part of it is like the

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Holy Spirit hadn't yet come to dwell within them. So you have a group of timid disciples on their own without all the full resources that God had to offer them at that moment.

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We're basically hiding in the upper room for, you know, after Jesus' crucifixion, just terrified.

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And God uses these individuals, like he sends the Holy Spirit to come to them. He restores them all.

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He sends the Holy Spirit to come to dwell within them in that way. And, you know, they, like these same group of timid individuals post -Pentecost become like the world's greatest evangelists that you've ever seen in that way.

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So, you know, part of it is they didn't have all the resources that God had to give them at that point to describe the

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Holy Spirit crassly as a resource in that way. But they didn't have the full gifts of the

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Spirit in that way. You know, part of it was an exercise in pride, like pride also.

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And then, you know, if you think about it, like these weren't individuals who were making allowance for future sin in a high -handed way.

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So the Bible has different categories. There are what you describe as intentional sins in the Bible, and then you have sins of weakness in the moment where you fully intend to be committed to the

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Lord, and then you aren't as committed as what you think, and you have to ask for forgiveness because you fully intended to do something.

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And yeah, sure, in a moment of weakness you fail. So that's very different though than planning out your disobedience in the future in a high -handed, hard -hearted way saying, you know,

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I, yeah, this marriage is hard. I don't care. I'm just going to quit because God will forgive me.

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Anytime any individual engages in a high -handed, stubborn, planned -out, premeditated rebellion, like laying aside of anything that God has to say at that point, you should always be much more concerned about them in that way.

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So yeah, no, Peter's example is not an example to say, well, because Peter denied the

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Lord and was restored, therefore you go and feel free to confidently do likewise.

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In fact, I mean, I think the worst thing you can do is put that one to the test at that point. Yeah, that seems pretty terrifying to risk.

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God will forgive me, right? Yeah, risk your eternal destination on a, like, well,

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He probably will forgive, you know. He's forgiven someone before, so He'll forgive me too, right? I don't know.

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That makes me nervous. Anytime anyone's like, basically like, where is the line so I can tow it?

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That's pretty scary to me. I wouldn't want to risk that.

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And sort of going along with that, I know there were a lot of people who were saying, hey, you should lie.

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You should lie about actually being a Christian, because at the end of the day,

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God knows your heart. I mean, the thought is hopefully the people who are threatening to kill you, they will believe what you're saying when you say, no,

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I'm not a Christian. But then God will know that you're actually lying and you actually don't mean it.

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And so, therefore, it is okay to lie and say that you are not a Christian in order to save your life and presumably, you know, continue to take care of the responsibilities you have here in this life, being children, family, whatever it is.

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And so, what is your response to that sort of statement that, hey, at the end of the day,

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God knows my heart. He knows I was lying. So, we're all good here. Matthew 10 and 39, whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

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I think one of the things that's happening in this kind of discussion is that people really just have very different priorities than God, and those kind of priorities are being revealed in these moments to where they're much more worldly than they think, and they don't even understand how worldly they actually are and the way that they think.

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They only think in terms of the here and now, and doing what seems to make the most sense for this life only.

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But, I mean, as you read through the Scriptures, one of the things you're going to find is that you're supposed to give up your life, right?

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Deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Jesus. Yeah, I wonder if people actually realize that when

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Jesus was saying, you know, deny yourself and take up your cross, that he's saying, hey, take up your, you know, executioner's tool.

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It's like saying take up your electric chair, take up your noose, or take up your firing squad and follow me.

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Right, I mean, definitely. I think after, like, generations of, you know, prosperity music that has basically taken over Christian radio, we've gotten to a point right now that we're just so worldly and we're so materialistic that we don't even understand, like, laying up for yourself treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.

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I mean, we're mostly thinking about building a kingdom here and now, not about laying up for ourselves treasures in heaven, not about taking our, you know, unrighteous mammon and using it to make friendships that will greet us into our eternal dwelling.

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So the idea of God knowing your heart, yeah, he does know your heart, and that's the scary thing, that he actually does know your heart, that you're not so committed to him that you're willing to suffer with him, right?

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Right. To share in his sufferings, you know, as the scripture says. And so, you know, what you have is you have a lot of Christians who basically, they don't understand that, like, a servant is above his master.

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If they persecuted Jesus, they're going to persecute you. And they don't understand the honor that Christians have getting to share some sort of small measure of what

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Christ experienced and to share in suffering with him and being, you know, like, even to the point of death, being able to share in a death with him so that we may reign with him forever, you know, for all eternity.

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So all that we're thinking about is just the here and now and our responsibilities in the here and now. And then we're thinking that, you know,

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Christianity, basically all it means is that you just say a magic prayer and you're saved, and that's it.

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Like, that's it. You just say your little magic prayer and you're it. And that's the scope of the Christian life. And then functionally, it's just up to you to figure out, well, how are you going to take care of all the responsibilities that God has given you?

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But then when you think about how big God is and how capable he is of taking care of even the smallest things in your life whatsoever, one of the things you realize is that to live is

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Christ, to die is gain. To live is Christ is to die is gain. I mean, if we're going to be living in the flesh, that may be more needful for other people at certain points.

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But God doesn't need us. He can use someone else to accomplish his purposes. He doesn't need us to help our kids.

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He doesn't need us to help our wives. He's more than capable and competent of taking care of them in other ways.

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So when we think about these things, there is a kind of person who definitely does think in this way that, you know, it's all up to them.

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God's not going to do anything. When you're faced with a situation where it's your life or your allegiance to God, we've lost any sense that, you know,

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God comes first, right? Being loyal to God is more important than life, breath, health, strength, and everything else.

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So we don't even have a category for suffering for God anymore. Yeah, and I think that, you know, a lot of people, they say that kind of line like, hey,

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God knows my heart. And, you know, whenever I hear that, I mean, obviously

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God does know our hearts. The Bible tells us as much. But then oftentimes, that's like, you know, when you think about that, that's a really scary thing, you know, to know that God knows our hearts.

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Meaning he knows all of the – the Bible tells us, again, I said this earlier, but the Bible tells us that our hearts are deceitful above all things.

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And all of that deceit, you know, all of those sinful desires that are stored up in our heart, God knows every single one of them.

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And so oftentimes when people bring up this, like, hey, whenever – because it's not just with this conversation as it pertains to, you know, denying the faith or lying about denying the faith in order to, you know, not be martyred.

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People say this all the time with a ton of different topics. They'll just throw out like a, well,

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God knows my heart as this sort of, like, I now declare myself the winner of this theological debate because God knows my heart, the end.

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You can't say anything about that now. And I just, you know, I wonder if people who say that realize what they're actually admitting here.

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And I also wonder, like, you know, I agree, yes, God does know your heart. God knows my heart. God knows everybody's heart.

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But then, like, do you actually know what's in your heart? Because I think most of us, as we progress, you know, through the process of sanctification, those of us who have confessed faith in Christ and have been covered by His blood, one of the things that you really do realize is that there is so much evil stored up in your heart.

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Even as a Christian, there's still so much evil that's stored up. And, you know, through sanctification, the

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Holy Spirit is cleansing you of those things and making you more like Christ.

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But then, as you go through that process, you just realize all of these other things that you never even, you might have never even known were there.

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And so, I always wonder when people start saying, hey, God knows my heart, like, yeah, He does.

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But then, you know, do you actually know your own heart? Because, like, that's a scary thing to just, like, hey,

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I'm just going to throw caution to the wind. I'm not going to consider any of the very clear Bible verses that we've already read today, and I'm just going to depend on, you know, like, hey,

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God knows I'm not lying. But how do you know you're not lying? I mean, you – Jared Paul makes a similar point in 1

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Corinthians 4. I mean, he makes the same exact kind of point that you're making, which is the kind of point that every faithful Christian should be thinking about in their mind as it relates to this kind of topic.

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So, you know, 1 Corinthians 4. One, I mean, essentially what's happening in the Church of Corinth is that they're accusing

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Him, and they're attacking His motives, and they're saying that He's doing, you know, He's doing what He's doing for selfish gain and everything else.

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But, you know, he says in 1 Corinthians 4. One, this is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

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Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. And then he says, but with me, it's a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court.

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So, in other words, what he's saying is if you want to think the worst of me and malign my motives, it's a very small thing what you think about me, right?

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What you think my motives are. Now, this is where most people end with the kind of move that you're talking about.

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They're basically saying, okay, well, you think I'm doing this with bad motives, whatever. You don't know my heart, right? But then he says, in fact,

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I do not even judge myself, okay? So, he's saying it's a small matter what you think my motives are.

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Like, I don't even judge myself. He says, for I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted.

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It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore, do not pronounce judgment before the time before the Lord comes who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.

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Then each one will receive his condemnation from God. I mean, he's essentially saying, hey, you know, whatever you think about me, it doesn't matter very much.

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Myself, like, I don't know of anything against myself, but you know what? It's a very small thing what I think about myself, too, because there could be a bunch of negative stuff in my heart that I'm not even aware of.

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Therefore, I'll leave it to God to figure these things out. And so, like, the kind of person who's just going to look and, like, self -confidently say, yeah, you know, my heart is full of, like, you know, rainbows and puppy dog, you know, farts and everything.

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I mean, it smells wonderful in there, right? It's like, yeah, I don't know, man. You know? I've never been particularly fond of puppy dog farts, but that's just me personally.

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Apparently, in the fur baby world, they don't smell very bad. So, okay, what about sort of going back to the

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Peter discussion, I think most of our conversation has been focused on the kind of person who is saying beforehand, you know, hey, like, meaning, like, hey,

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I've put significant thought, or at least, you know, some premeditated thought. Yeah, like,

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I'm planning on lying and saying that I'm not a Christian in order to escape whatever persecution might come.

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And I think that kind of person is probably already doing that. You know? I think they're already doing that anytime it costs them anything.

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Yeah, like in all the small ways, right? They're just announcing what they do probably almost daily in their confession that, hey,

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I am going to lie in order to not be killed for whatever excuse you might have.

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And you can try and make it sound good, but then, you know, God has said what he said. So, most of our conversation has been geared towards that person.

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What about the person who is more like Peter's example where they're saying, hey, you know,

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I'm not going to deny. I'm not going to deny. You know, I know what God has said. I don't, you know, he said that if I deny him, he's going to deny me, and I don't want him to deny me.

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I don't want to deny God. And they get, but then the moment comes, right? And, you know, the time comes for them to choose whether they're going to lie and say that they're not a

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Christian and potentially save their own life or avoid the persecution altogether, or they tell the truth, yes,

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I am a follower of Christ, and then they face whatever persecution comes after that.

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And they choose to lie and say that they're not a

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Christian because they're scared in the moment. But all the way leading up to that, they're determined to, like, not forsake

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Christ, even if it meant dying. Are there any differences between that and the person who is premeditated, you know, saying

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I'm going to deny to save my own life? Are there differences between them in God's eyes?

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Are they the same? You know, is that something that God can forgive, or is it like a, hey, once you do it, you're done?

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How does that work? I mean, God can obviously forgive any sin that He's determined that He's going to forgive.

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So, I mean, it's not an issue of God's ability to forgive any particular sin in that way.

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I think some of what we're talking about here are related to realities that are more comprehensive than this one topic even.

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Okay, what do you mean? Well, I mean, the basic call of a Christian life is to say

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Jesus is Lord. So He's Lord of my life, and I'm going to do what

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He says. And, you know, my life is, the life

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I live, I now live in the flesh. I live to Him, right? To the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

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So there's a sense in which, like, when you think about, like, the kind of scenarios that we're actually talking about, like, real

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Christians should be suffering now anyways for Christ. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

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So the Bible says all those who desire to live faithfully in Christ Jesus will suffer, right?

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So you think about that, you think about the nature of the Christian life is the life that's filled with these small moments of persecution, these small moments of suffering that are going to prepare us for bigger moments of faithfulness or bigger moments of unfaithfulness.

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And so part of what's happening here is you have a discussion about just how you're preparing yourself for those moments here and now in general.

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So, I mean, there's a kind of person who basically is not going to lose anything for the sake of Jesus.

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And that's already showing up in their life in a pretty comprehensive way. Meaning they're in it for themselves, they're in it for what

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Christ has to give them, and then the moment, like, difficult things happen, they're saying, you know, why me, God?

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Why would you allow this to happen in my life? And I don't deserve this, and this isn't fair, and everything else.

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And so there's a variety of ways that Christians will reveal that they're fundamentally not really out, they're not really serving the

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Lord in those moments, they're not living under Christ's lordship in general. So the longer you watch a professing

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Christian's life, you're either compiling evidence to say, hey, this person is faithful and they're persevering and they're enduring in the

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Christian life, or you're compiling evidence to say that they really just haven't been tested yet at all to determine what they're made of.

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So, like, they're just, they said, hey, I'm a Christian at some point, but then their life doesn't show any real evidence of it.

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And the real, I mean, the evidence that really matters is the kind of evidence to say, like, are they willing to deny themselves?

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Are they willing to take up their cross? Are they willing to follow Jesus? And so they're either, like, you either have evidence of that that you're already demonstrating in their life, meaning,

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I mean, the kind of Christian who is going to spend their life, you know, having, like, being slandered, being mistreated, having individuals who are, like, losing opportunities for the sake of the

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Lord, that they're already prioritizing the Lord even when it costs them something. They're the kind of person who, when the gun is held up to their head, they're going to say, hey, pull the trigger, right?

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Because they've trained themselves over a long period of time to get to a point where, like, they want nothing more than Jesus.

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So you're either living life in such a way that you're cultivating a desire to honor the

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Lord no matter what, or you're living your life in such a way to say that, hey, I don't really want anything to do with the

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Lord, I'm just using Him for the kind of things that He's going to give me in that way. So, like, these are not just, like, part of this is like an abstract hypothetical about something that most people are not going to experience anytime soon, you know, or maybe soon, but who knows, right?

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So part of it's like a hypothetical discussion, but then when you're thinking about that along those lines, then you think about what's happening with Peter and you have happening with the early disciples.

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They really, at the very beginning of Jesus's earthly ministry, they didn't understand the nature of the Christian life at all.

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So they expected Jesus to come and it was going to be winning, right? They were going to come, they were going to take over the

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Romans. I mean, even John the Baptist thought they were going to come and they were going to take over the Romans. And when Jesus didn't act the way that everyone expected

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Him to act, John the Baptist started second -guessing, is this really Christ? Because he's not doing the kind of things that he says he's going to do.

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But then when Jesus died, that ultimately was a shock to everyone's system at that point to say this is the nature of what it means to follow

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Jesus, is to follow Him unto death. And He died and He provided an example for all of us. And so Christians today, we don't even have the same kind of inbuilt excuses that the disciples had at that point.

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Meaning, we have a complete canon, a complete revelation that tells – we're in a way better situation than Peter because we can look at Peter's example and we can say, hey,

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Peter's example was given to us to tell us what not to do, right? Right, it's a warning.

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It's a warning to us. And then you have all the warning passages of Scripture that talk about falling away from the faith and not loving your life unto death and don't deny the

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Lord and all the kind of passages that we've read. So obviously, we're in a very different situation now than Peter regardless.

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We're in a very different kind of situation. And then let's say that because we have his example and we have the example of Scripture and we have the full revelation of who

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Christ is at that point and the coming of the Holy Spirit, so we have a lot more than Peter had at that moment to put in our minds.

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But then, yeah, I mean, if a person in a moment of weakness denies the

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Lord, I think there's a sense in which every time you sin, you're denying the Lord. Like in a small way.

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But then there's a person who's going to make their peace with that as if it's normal and then there's going to be the person who over the course of their life is grieved over it and asking the

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Lord to purify their heart. And then if you look at the whole testimony of their life, you're going to see, hey, the whole testimony of their life was not just denial all the way down, right, the end.

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It was faithfulness to God. And so you have people like that. And I mean, I think there's even stories like that from church history where the guy denies the

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Lord once and then everyone is suspicious of him and then he denies the Lord again the second time, but then the third time he gets it right.

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He gets his head cut off. And so, I mean, I think that God obviously works with people over time.

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I think before I formally became a Christian, I was in situations like that where people asked, are you a

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Christian? I was like, no, because I didn't want to deal with it. But then I was saved later on. I mean, that's like a total foreign thought.

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That's 20 years ago before being a Christian, kind of thinking. And at this point, you look at the totality of a person's life,

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I think there's probably a lot more evidence that Christ is at work within someone and purifying them.

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And maybe me today is very different than my unsaved, feckless version earlier, hopefully.

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Okay. Well, I think that's a good place for us to wrap up the conversation on this.

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And, you know, we said this towards the beginning, Tim, but I think this is a pretty needed conversation because it really does seem like persecution towards the

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American church is coming. And, I mean, that's true. I mean, you've seen videos of people getting arrested for sharing their faith in public.

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Just for reading the gospel and sharing the gospel with people. And so this is certainly coming.

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And to pretend that it's not, you know, barring some just dramatic cultural change, which,

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I mean, could happen. God is capable of anything. And so it's not like that's totally off the table, but it just right now that seems very unlikely.

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And it seems extremely unwise to pretend that persecution is not coming for the church.

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And so I think this conversation is desperately needed just because it really does seem like most

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American Christians are totally unprepared for any sort of serious persecution.

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And certainly some of it's going on right now, but I think, you know, I'm talking on a more wide scale.

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I just don't think people are ready for it. And people just have not thought through these issues with any sort of, you know, with any sort of, like, real just, hey, this is actually coming.

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Maybe I should actually take this seriously, you know, and understand that this is a big deal.

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And the fact that some people are even willing to say, like, hey, lie and say that you're not a

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Christian and that will honor God. I mean, there's so many things wrong with that. We didn't even touch on the fact that you're lying to begin with, which is a sin still.

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Like, that's still a sin that you're committing just in and of itself that you're willing to tell something that you think is, that you at least think is not the truth.

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I mean, it could be you are telling the truth when you say, hey, I'm not a Christian. It could be you think you're lying, but you are actually telling the truth.

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Yeah, I think the one who's pretending to deny the faith is speaking better than they know. Right, right.

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But then, you know, it's a lie in the sense that you think you are lying. Like, you don't realize you're actually telling the truth.

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And so there's just a lot of issues with that. And the fact that people are willing to say, hey, just lie, you know, and go back home to your family at the end of the day.

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God knows your heart. I mean, all of these things are just, that's a scary position to be in, and I would plead with anyone who thinks that way to please reconsider because you're playing, at best, you are playing an extremely dangerous game with your eternal salvation, and I would not want that for you.

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So I think this is a desperately needed topic that more people need to be talking about and people need to be thinking about on their own and praying about and asking themselves, hey, am

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I actually being persecuted? Because as I read the Bible, they were all persecuted, you know, and that should still be happening today.

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I mean, maybe we don't need to be, maybe it doesn't necessarily mean like you're unfaithful unless you've been fed to lions, but if people don't even know that you're a

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Christian, then you are certainly probably missing something along the way when it comes to pursuing faithfulness towards God, if they don't even know that you're a

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Christian to begin with. So think through these things, those of you who are listening, think through these things and really ask yourself,

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I think the question for all of us ultimately is, hey, what will I do when that situation comes?

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You know, when the gun is pointed to my head and they tell me, they ask me, are you a

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Christian? Do you follow Christ? Is Christ Lord? What will your answer be? Because that's an important question and we need to know what we're going to say and be prepared to say it.

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And that starts now. I liked what you said, Tim, about, you know, it's not like you're all of a sudden going to get into the most dramatic situation possible and then out of nowhere you're going to do the right thing.

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You're going to do what you've been practicing all along the way, right? And for the person who is facing, you know, small forms of persecution now, they're much more likely when the time comes to do the right thing when the gun is put to their head, right?

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And so we all need to be preparing that same way and looking at Christ's example ultimately because He is our example.

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I mean, He did lay down His life for us and so we need to be willing to do the same for Him.

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