"DUTY IS OURS---RESULTS ARE GOD'S
“DUTY IS OURS---RESULTS ARE GOD’S”
Sunday, August 9, 2015, the Year of our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
“Duty is ours---Results are God’s”. This week I was blessed to hear the strong, Christian stand of the G.O.P. candidates. They came forth as bold warriors taking the fight to the anti-Christian and anti-American doctrines of the Obama Administration. I was almost convinced that all of Washington and most national leaders have all been “drinking the kool-aid” and cowered down to the intimidation of the liberal left.
Through the past 2000+ years, Christians have suffered dreadful persecutions. Our nation was founded by Christians with the purpose that we would have the freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our heart.
This week I read the story of one race of persecuted Christians, the Waldenses, of Italy and the great massacre of 1686. We say, ‘this can’t happen in the United States of America.” I say, unless the people of the United States awake out of their stupor, and begin to take the fight to the anti-Christians and moderate Republican establishment, it will happen here.
In the recesses of the great chain of Alpine mountains which forms the barrier between France and Italy are three secluded valleys. For ages the Christians who inhabited these valleys struggled for religious freedom. The Waldenses originated in the late 12th century named after a merchant, Peter Wald (or Valdes), who began to read the Bible for himself, believed it, and was appalled by the corruption of the medieval church.
Persecution drove the followers of Waldo/Valdes into the remote mountain valleys of what today is southeastern France/northwestern Italy.
Truth when banished from the altars of the Church, the halls of learning, and the palaces of kings, found a safe asylum among this Alpine remnant. A simple race of peasants struggled for a thousand years against the corruptions of Rome, while the rest of Europe lay prostrate at Rome’s feet.
Their banner was a simple white flag---certainly not a white flag of surrender, but a pure white flag symbolic of “Truth”.
Age after age witnessed the flames of persecution raging around them---laying their hamlets in ashes, condemning the inhabitants amid the harsh winters to wander among their strongholds with no refuge but a cavern, and no pillow but the sod.
Every mountain, valley, rock and cave has some tale to tell of daring deeds and noble achievements. These are surely counted among those “of whom the world was not worthy.”
I have searched the internet the last couple of days discovering the mountains and valleys of their plight and flight. The beauty and grandeur of the scenery is beyond my language capabilities. In the midst of this beauty, the Divine Providence of God selected these lands for depositing the precious seeds of martyrdom
Like Israel in her persecutions, the Waldenses, declared the victory song of Psalm 124:
“If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, now may Israel say; If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us; then they had swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us: Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul. Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as a prey to their teeth. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we are escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”
This is a Psalm of national deliverance. It is a song to God the Rescuer. The Lord preserves all those who ascend into Zion.
Disappointments and difficulties will not shake the faith of those who stand and even fight for a righteous cause. The Waldenses felt assured that the Lord of hosts was on their side, and would ultimately crown their efforts with victory; of if they fell, that their martyred blood should become the seed of a future harvest.
Though we live in troubled times in the U.S.A., we have not yet been called by God to shed blood. However, the shootings and bombings conducted by radical Islamist within the United States is the shedding of innocent blood.
We need a warrior leader with Christian fortitude, fire, and indomitable perseverance; someone who will be undaunted by difficulties, unmoved by the fears and apprehensions of those less courageous than himself.
This is strength and courage higher than mortal man can aspire to unless they are armed with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. I have been assured, the Lord will in due season raise up such a leader.
There is always that split-second when we are faced with a battle, do we fold and run, or are we resolved by faith to either conquer or perish in the attempt?
We must support the weak, encourage those who faint with fear, comfort the feebleminded, warn them that are unruly, and be patient toward those who do not have the courage to stand.
In those moments of truth where I have had to stand before God in the face of battle, I thank God for the faith and grace to be given the resolve to either conquer or perish.
“Fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
“The victory is ours---Omnipotence is on our side---Jehovah, the God of battles leads us on to triumph!”
Are we to sit passively by cowering behind our crystal doors while baby parts are being harvested for money? Christians are being beheaded in the Middle East? The Supreme Court has presumed to usurp the authority of the God of Creation by declaring that same sex marriage is legal. Now, not only legal, but those who do not recognize same sex marriage as the law of the land can be put out of business. Do we sit passively while Iran declares “death to America and to Israel”; and the President of the United States surrenders our nation to Iran? He surrendered Afghanistan to ISIS.
Do we sit idly by and hear the threats coming forth that pastors can no longer preach the uncompromised Gospel of Jesus Christ from the pulpits?
Do we sit idly by while our military is being gunned down within our borders and they are not allowed to arm themselves? Illegals come across our borders and murder citizens; and then are treated as citizens.
No! There will always be a remnant who will never abandon the struggle until the battle is won and the Lord Jesus Christ returns with the armies of Heaven, and the last standard of Antichrist is torn from our churches and governments. The Judeo-Christian foundation of our nation was to provide Christians with freedom of religion and liberty of conscience.
Let not your hearts despond at the magnitude of the government. He that is for you is greater than all that be against you. Jesus encouraged the faint and desponding Gideon. He took a shepherd boy and a few pebbles from the brook, and laid in the dust the champion of the Philistines. He will extend his banner of protecting love over the remnant who lives and preaches the truth of His Word.
Retreat we cannot. We, who have been given more glorious blessings than any people the earth, have ever seen and accomplished more in the past 200 years than any nation ever on earth. Retreat in fear? Cower down and water down the Word of God because government leaders say we have to be politically correct and weaken the power of a moral plumb line.
Church set up our Ebenezer stone, saying, “Hitherto has the Lord helped us”. The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church.
If we are following wholly after the Lord, “God the Lord is on our side.”
Ps. 46:9: “He makes wars to cease unto the end of the earth; He breaks the bow, and cuts the spear in sunder; He burns the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the heathen. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge.”
To resume our story of the Waldenses, the Lord raised up a man in England to intervene to halt the persecution. Oliver Cromwell’s intervention is recognized as the first humanitarian intervention in history.
At the same time that he intervened for the Christians, he approved the re-admission of the Jews into England after nearly four centuries in which their presence had been illegal.
Cromwell freed all people who believed in God as revealed in the Bible to worship Him as they saw fit. The Puritans established America on the Cromwell doctrines of freedom of religion.
Cromwell’s passionate letter to the Duke of Savoy to stop killing the Waldenses was written by the poet, Milton.
“The most serene Protector of England has been informed of these most miserable people who have been cruelly massacred by your forces, part driven out by violence, and forced to leave their native habitations---and so without house or shelter, poor, and destitute of all relief, do wander up and down, with their wives and children in craggy and uninhabitable places, and mountains covered with snow. Oh! The fired houses which are yet smoking, the torn limbs, and ground defiled with blood...In the meantime, the angels are surprised with horror; men are amazed; heaven itself seems to be astonished with the cries of dying men; and the very earth to blush…Do not Thou, O Thou Most High God, do not Thou take that revenge which is due to great wickedness and horrible villainies! Let Thy blood, O Christ, wash away this blood!”
Many writers and theologians of the time compared the sufferings of the Waldenses to the “two Witnesses” in Revelation. As we have diligently studied the prophets, we know the calamities and afflictions of the Church, do, in some measure, run parallel one to another. All the former efforts of the tyrannical and persecuting power of the Beast are types and figures of his last and greatest effort against the “Witnesses.”
“And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. Their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. They of the people, and kindreds and tongues, and nations, shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. They that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. After 3-1/2 days the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.” (Rev. 11: 7-11)
The most striking coincidence between the prophecy and its alleged fulfillment in this persecution, is the period of duration, three prophetical days and a half- i.e. three years and a half---during which the “dead bodies,” were left to lie in the street, being the exact space of time which elapsed from the edict of 1686 to their deliverance in 1690.
Their faithful witness was for the truth.
What became of these brave Waldenses? They gradually adopted the doctrines and merged into the mainstream, of the Protestant Reformation. Those living in the south of France were absorbed into the Calvinist French Huguenots. Those in Savoy, Italy remained separate and evolved into the modern Waldensian Church.
It is impossible to overstate the admiration the Protestant Reformers felt for the Vaudois, who had courageously (and almost uniquely) maintained the primacy of Scripture over canon law and tradition for four centuries.
Romans 11:5: “Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.”
Psalm 124: “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, now may Israel say; If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us; they would have swallowed us alive.”
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries Church
Scripture from K.J.V. – I entered into the labors of The Exiles of Lucerna during the persecution of 1686 by: John Ross MacDuff – public domain. Comments and conclusions are my own. I affirmed the facts and dates and names on Wikipedia.