"Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection." That they might gain a better resurrection! Are we seeking to gain a "better resurrection"?

Tradition says it was Isaiah who was sawed in two.

The perseverance and courage of the Old Testament saints make us of today look like babies with our talk about a "rapture" to deliver us from trouble. How come we think God loves us so much more than those saints, and the saints of today who are being tortured and killed in various countries of the world? Has God become a respecter of persons?

Am I too hard or are we too soft?

God wants us to return to the original Gospel of the Kingdom. Those who have gone before us have left bloody footprints in the snow.

Israel of the Old Testament displeased God and He sent them back into the wilderness. They had to wander one year for each day the spies searched the land. Then they had to be armed for war and invade the land of Canaan. God did not make it easy for them but He helped them whenever they did what He commanded.

The Hebrew prophets suffered hardness. Jeremiah was so miserable he complained of having been born. The prophets were rejected and renounced. Many of them were slain.

John the Baptist lived no easy life and finally was beheaded.

The Lord Jesus and His Apostles suffered much rejection, much humiliation, numerous hardships of all kinds.

The early Christians were persecuted viciously. So were other Christians throughout the ages.

Statisticians tell us more Christians have been martyred in the twentieth century than in any other. Today as I am writing a thousand or more Christians will be tortured or killed in different countries of the world.

And then the pampered Christians of America say I am being too hard! What will they do in the future when no rapture takes place and they are being governed by the United Nations and their values are scorned and trampled under foot?

When He whose eyes are as fires appears and they realize He is not pleased with their lukewarmness, that He is not going to treat them as favorites, when they will have to suffer as Christians have suffered throughout the centuries, will they turn against Christ? Will they curse Him because of their pain?

It is not that the Gospel is too hard, it is that American Christians are too soft.

The believers of today are spoiled. Spoiled children become tyrants.

The New Testament means what is says. The Christian salvation is not an easy alternative to transformation into the image of Christ and untroubled rest in the Father. Rather it is the only way to such glory.

To be continued.