And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the Name of Jesus. Acts 4:18
In a speech in 1961, 20 years before he became the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan made the following statement: ‘Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction’. Seizing upon that solemn quotation, Rick Santorum, a former US senator and an aspiring White House candidate, began producing a film that is called One Generation Away: The Erosion of Religious Liberty. In the film, Santorum points out that religious freedom in his country is under attack. The film cites a number of cases of such attack. For example, several wedding service companies owned by Christians have been sued for refusing to cater for homosexual ‘weddings’. Some have been fined huge amounts of money and forced out of business. Santorum’s film warns against a repeat of what happened in Nazi Germany when churches there ignored the erosion of freedoms all around them until it was too late and Hitler took away all of their freedoms, too. Opposition to the Gospel and to its God is not new; as we can see by our text today.
The disciples had a healed man as a witness to the power of the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. But it didn’t matter to the Jewish leaders of that day. Nothing mattered but the quieting of those who were preaching the Gospel. Nothing mattered but that their little agenda be allowed to function, regardless of how corrupt and evil. Does that sound a little familiar? Does it remind you of Sodom? And does it remind you of present-day sodomites and their ever-growing power to push the homosexual agenda to the forefront of our society? Homosexuals and their supporters hate the Bible because of its condemnation of their abominable lifestyle, and they hate those who believe and preach the truths of the Bible. Before the Harper Conservatives came to power in 2006, a powerful movement was gathering steam in Canada to have the Bible declared hate literature because of its condemnation of gays. After the Liberals were returned to power, now supported by the stridently gay-promoting New Democrats, there has been a huge resurgence of that anti-Bible campaign that is festering underground just waiting to be released by some vile politician brazen and evil enough to do it. Will they succeed? If they do, Gospel preaching as we know it – and most other freedoms too – will become a thing of the past. Our Assemblies will be effectively driven underground. Do you think it can’t happen? Don’t be too sure!
The opponents of the Gospel want to shut us up. And they are much closer to doing so than we realize. Are we less than a generation away from losing the right to preach the Gospel? Only God can keep that door open. – Jim MacIntosh