The Nation of the Church

Recently, I read along with the rest of the world about the brutal massacre of 21 Egyptian Christians by ISIS. Another horrific, intentionally symbolic and strategic blood-bath by a group of terrorists who are attempting to strike fear into everyone with an internet connection and a heart. The gruesome video was titled:

“A Message in Blood to the Nation of the Cross.”

In response, Jonathan Storment, preaching minister of the Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas wrote the following:

I’m a part of this ‘Nation of the Cross’ and it doesn’t have a nation, it is an international, world-wide community of people who believe that this is actually not the worst thing you can do to us. Terrorism and acts that are designed as symbolic fear-driven aggressive acts of bullying only strengthen our resolve to lay down our lives. You can’t kill people who have already died. That’s who you are talking about and who you are talking to when you address “the people of the Cross.”

The people of God have faced worse things than this before and we actually have a bit of historical perspective on what God does with our spilled blood. “The blood of Christians is the seed of Christianity” one early Jesus follower wrote during a much scarier time than this. And he was right, you have no idea the sleeping giant that you are waking with this challenge, and it’s not the West. It’s the power of the redeemed suffering of the people of God. It’s what Revelation calls “the power of the Lamb.”

In the Bible, murder doesn’t silence the voices of the slain. In the Bible, blood cries out to God, in the Bible murder only amplifies to God the sound, and I’ll be God’s ears are ringing. Your attempt at symbolically killing people cannot frighten disciples of a man who died by the very kind of propaganda you are trying to create. You have no idea how foolish what you have done is.

May we join the voices of the saints in Heaven looking on asking, “How long O Lord?” May the families of these brothers and sisters receive the comfort of God and may these martyrs rest in peace and rise in glory.

Come soon LORD Jesus.

In His Grace,
Jared