Welcome to Timeless Truth with Pastor Jim Thomas. This season, Pastor Jim is leading us in a study of The Sermon on the Mount.
The Sermon on the Mount is found in Matthew, chapters 5-7.
“Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Matthew 5:10-12
“IT MAY SEEM strange that Jesus should pass from peacemaking to persecution, from the work of reconciliation to the experience of hostility. Yet however hard we may try to make peace with some people, they refuse to live at peace with us. Not all attempts at reconciliation succeed.”
John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount
“Believers in the early church were not persecuted for worshipping God. They were persecuted for worshipping no god or emperor apart from God.”
Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible‘s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture
“No wonder the Christians made an impression out of all proportion to their numbers. Conviction in the midst of waverers, fiery energy in a world of disillusion, purity in an age of easy morals, firm brotherhood in a loose society, heroic courage in a time of persecution, formed a problem that could not be set aside, however polite society might affect to ignore it: and the religion of the future turned on the answer to it. Would the world be able to explain it better than the Christians, who said it was the living power of the risen Savior?”
Henry M. Gwatkin
Learn more about the persecution of Christians in the world: International Justice Mission and The Voice of the Martyrs
“We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green.”
G K Chesterton
“We bless you, who have spelt your blessings out,
And set this lovely lantern on a hill
Lightening darkness and dispelling doubt
By lifting for a little while the veil.
For longing is the veil of satisfaction
And grief the veil of future happiness
We glimpse beneath the veil of persecution
The coming kingdom’s overflowing bliss
Oh make us pure of heart and help us see
Amongst the shadows and amidst the mourning
The promised Comforter, alive and free,
The kingdom coming and the Son returning,
That even in this pre-dawn dark we might
At once reveal and revel in your light.”
Malcolm Guite, Parable and Paradox
