As we celebrate the highest of holy days in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it may be wise to take time for some introspection. My son recently sent me an article about the decline of Christianity in our nation. It talked about how only 18 percent of Millennials find Christianity relevant. The article said that Christians get enraged at immorality, policy, and the state of affairs in our country and around the world.

Yet we are demanding that people hold to moral beliefs as justified by a Book that they don’t even read. On a day that we commemorate Christ sacrificing His life that all who believe on Him may have everlasting life, Christians, as a whole, should be doing a better job as disciples than what we have been doing.

1 Corinthians 5:12 asks, “For what have I to do to judge them also that are outside? do not you judge them that are within?” In direct speak, it means that we have no business holding those who do not know the gospel accountable to our standards. That’s why we are exhorted, even commanded, to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey what the Lord has commanded us.

We must find ways to make Christianity relevant. It has been tainted to be identified with political ideals, when in reality—the political ideals should be identified with Christianity, foundationally centered on God’s love and love for one another.

This starts with our individual relationship with the Lord; to look at our families, communities, states, nations from a Christian lens, we should first start by looking in the mirror.

The apostle Peter wrote in 1 Peter 4:17-19, “For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God; and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.”

The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 10:13-14, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?”

Jesus said in Matthew 24:23, “Then if any man shall say unto you ‘Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.’”

Our national identity and more important, our personal salvation is diluted tremendously if we, as Peter put it, “scarcely be saved.” If America’s preachers are so intent on preaching/teaching a self-indulgent, extra biblical and emotional version of the Christ, then what Christ are we following? The real Son of God, crucified and risen, for our sins, or some humanist version of Christ that fits a social or political extra-biblical gospel?

It is here, not on the national policy front, that we as a people have lost our identity. This should be a serious personal consideration that gives weight to working out your salvation with fear and trembling.

Have a blessed and powerful day!

Bill Wilson
www.dailyjot.com

The UN International Organization for Migration has posted a report in which it calls “shocking” events in Northern and West Africa. Its staff in Niger and Libya have “described ‘slave markets’ tormenting hundreds of young African men bound for Libya.” While this horror may come as a “shock” to the UN, it is commonplace in Islamic nations and Islamic controlled areas.

Each year the State Department’s Report on Human Rights points to Islamic nations as the most egregious violators of human rights because of human trafficking, violence against women and children, persecution of non-Muslims, and slavery. These very things are encountered each day in our ministry in Ghana.

Our ministry partner in Ghana, Pastor William Agbeti writes: “Quite recently, a Ghanaian lady smuggled to Dubai managed to send a voice-recorded appeal to a friend, who forwarded it to me for help. I, in turn, forwarded it to the police. In her appeal, the lady said she and numerous others were trafficked from Ghana to Dubai, under false pretenses.

She ended up in the house of a Muslim man in Dubai as a sex slave and house cleaner. She is forced to work endlessly during the day, and at night she is subjected to extreme sex. She is not allowed to leave the house under any circumstance. Not even for medical attention. In a heartbreaking voice, amidst weeping, she appealed to the Ghanaian authorities to come to her aid. “The police have not gotten back to me on the issue.”

Agbeti continued: “Now, in our own ministerial quarters, a young girl also almost fell victim to the Islamic human trafficking. The traffickers took her money, warned her not to tell anybody, and set a date for her journey to “greener pastures.” God loving her so much, she mustered up courage and approached us to seek a final opinion about the opportunity.

Was she fortunate or what? To cut a long story short, the girl is currently under the care of our ministry, safely enrolled in a school, far from harm’s way. We are responsible for her needs and school fees. These and other developments make our work quite dangerous but highly necessary as we seek to make the world a much better place to live in with your help.”

The UN has similar reports. The Islamic slave and human sex trafficking trade is big business. In Libya and Somalia, for example, Islamists entice people unawares or outright kidnap them and hold them for ransom. If their families are unable to pay up, the victims are sold into slavery. They are used up, starved, raped, and are often murdered. This is reality.

Islam protects and foments human trafficking and the modern slave trade. Unlike the Koran, the Bible says the theft of a man for profit is a capital offense. Exodus 21 lists judgments set before the Israelites. Verse 16 says: “He that steals a man, and sells him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.”

God’s freedom vs. Allah’s slavery. Who in their right mind would consider Islam?

Have a blessed and powerful day!

Bill Wilson
www.dailyjot.com