The remnant must and will hold.

I’ve been fighting off a viral infection over the last two days. The local GP tells me that it is viral — but I would need some time off. And she was right — I’m at home for the second day in a row, because I know that my brain is only working at half speed, and that is not good enough for work.

The news overnight was simply depressing. Around 100 people have been killed in car bombs in Pakistan, It looks like there is a cholera outbreak in Cuba. It’s bushfire season in Australia and the warm weather they are having has led to scrub fires in NZ (For the non antipodeans, Australia in summer gets above 100 F while NZ is around 75 – 80 F. The forests in Australia include gums which require fire to germinate, and fires in the bush are a natural occurrence. NZ, which is cooler, has either scrubland (in Canterbury and central Otago) ow rain forest. Rain forests generally do not burn).

And when I look at the USA I find that the President is trying to ban guns despite this being not allowed by the second amendment.  This could lead to a disaster: many Americans hold guns as a sign of freedom. They believe in the constitution with a religious .fervor. If this policy proceeds, it will make the prohibition look like a tea party

.We have, however, advice as to what to do a s a faithful remnant. And that is hold fast.

Revelation 3:7-13

⁷“And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:
These are the words of the holy one, the true one,
who has the key of David,
who opens and no one will shut,
who shuts and no one opens:
⁸“I know your works. Look, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. ⁹I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but are lying — I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you. ¹⁰Because you have kept my word of patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. ¹¹I am coming soon; hold fast to what you have, so that no one may seize your crown. ¹²If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will never go out of it. I will write on you the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem that comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. ¹³Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

Most churches are small. Most churches have little power. In most of the world, believers are now a minority. This has some virtues.

• You lose the liberals. They cannot see the church as having a power base, or they see the church as something they have gelded, and can now leave alone. They are too busy storming what they perceive as the bastions of power — demanding quotas in board rooms or senior partnerships. The exception is the university jobs: but they are few in number.
• The leadership is more likely to be faithful. No one should be in the ministry to make money, and in most churches the stipend allows a minister to live like a teacher. Only those who believe and are called should do this job, and the relative lack of money (you can make a lot more as a tradesman) means that people who are not called don’t go there.
• You support each other. Because no one else will. The persecuted church has always been a church of fervent faith.
• You keep it simple. The argument is not over how the priest stands at the altar, but if there are the elements for communion  Or guitars versus the organ, but can we sing at all. You do not need to be “high church” to have a service.
• Your life is different from the mainstream culture. The Christians are easy to see, because they are not participating in the cultic acts of feminism — the ritual dating game, the sexual market place, and that high ritual of feminism, the abortion (I think Ann Coulter invented that phrase)..

It is not a good time folks. Our job is to hold. To support each other. To pray for each other. Even if we are fighting.This includes praying for all churches, and all church leaders, so that they may hold, and not poison our salvation with the infection of liberalism.