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God's Kingdom will persevere beyond this election cycle.
I am not sure who will win the upcoming election. Let me say that up front. I do not have any special knowledge or insight about what the results will be—or when they will be known.
I do know that many people—many of my friends and neighbors—will be upset about the result. I know people on both sides who think a victory for the other side’s candidates will irreparably harm our nation and churches.
When I hear these woe to the church warnings, I am encouraged that God is greater than any opposition as I reflect on places around the world where my Christian brothers and sisters have no religious freedom and where their government is actively opposed to every form of Christian activity. Yet, it is often in those places where God is moving most powerfully.
In 1979, there was a massive shift in political power in Iran. The Islamic Revolution put the mullahs—Islamic religious leaders—in charge of the entire nation. They promised a nation run strictly along Islamic principles, treating the Quran as if it was the constitution and placing an Imam as “Supreme Leader.”
For Iranian Christians—and those praying for them and supporting them from around the world—it seemed like the worst news possible. What place would there be for Christians—especially “apostate” converts from Islam—in the Islamic Republic of Iran? Many believed that the end of the church in Iran was at hand.
Forty years later, those pronouncements seem laughable. The fastest-growing church in the world is in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and more Muslims have come to Christ in Iran since the Islamic revolution than in all of the other roughly 1,400 years since the advent of Islam.
It has not ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
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