Visibly shaken, Brett announced to the gathering, “The city council decreed today that churches are forbidden to meet outside of designated chapels, and they must sign agreements not to comment on other faiths or on alternative life styles, nor to pray for sick children. We have to comply or disband and drop our plans to start new churches.†The believers looked at each other in dismay. Some wept.
Sixteen current global trends require that we church planters make adjustments to our methods while redoubling our effort. Jesus not only warned of world-wide apostasy and persecution, he also predicted that the Good News about his coming Reign would reach all populations, during the same time, just before the end of this age and his return in power. The following 15 theses and recommendations are offered to stimulate discussion, prayer and fresh strategies.
- Government surveillance and citizen lawlessness. Churches must remain small and mobile, in order to avoid false accusation, on one hand, and violent intrusion, on the other hand.
- Globalist regulation, harassment and suppression. Churches must remain internally self-governing by creatively circumventing regulations that would limit their obedience to Christ.
- Secret arrest and detention without legal recourse. Churches and their leaders must prove easily reproducible, so both may continually multiply, even while authorities seek to eliminate both.
- National indebtedness and monetary inflation. Churches must find ways and means by which to operate without budgets, and by employing methods and materials that require little or no financial support.
- Collusion of big business with government. Churches must provide their members with alternative social and financial networks that share opportunities, knowledge and resources.
- Highly regulated and restricted health care. Churches must teach and practice biblical principles of agriculture, nutrition, and sanitation, along with healing prayer, for better health and longevity.
- Prevalence of weapons and threat of violence. Churches must learn to pray both for peace and safety in the midst of lawless violence and urban warfare, while teaching prudence as peace-makers.
- Erosion of civil rights and liberties. Churches must provide alternative communities of loving, mutual help and of intercessory prayer in behalf of those unjustly arrested, fined or imprisoned.
- Transfer and centralization of wealth to international cartels. Churches must teach, to seekers and believers, biblical principles economics and entrepreneurship along with marketable skills.
- Attacks on veterans, the self-sufficient and libertarians. Churches must be planted within every social segment, without declaring for or against any particular economic or political ideology.
- War and alliances against non-compliant regimes. In some places and circumstances, churches must learn to reproduce, in a variety of forms, even under threats of destruction.
- Hazards to health from vaccines, radiation, medication and genetically-modified foods. Churches must teach and practice pro-life alternatives, including civil non-compliance, while offering eternal life.
- Atheistic world-view ideology by decree. Churches must continually teach and defend a messianic, theistic world-view, along with frequent experience of answered prayer in Jesus’ name.
- Governmental support of non-Christian, religious parliaments and courts. Churches must teach Scriptural wisdom and defense, depending on the Holy Spirit for timely contextual wisdom.
- Rule by state and global, executive decree. Churches must keep on reproducing, training, worshiping and reaching out, even where forbidden to do so, praying for divine protection.
- Radical, militarized, religious armies imposing harsh social controls. Churches must teach on the “gift of martyrdom,†while advocating for justice within international fora.
Download as a document from http://yesnet.pw/pdfs/cp_during_political_upheaval_31-aug-2014.pdf
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