The war against Christ has been going on for as long as anyone in the underground church can remember.  It seems to its members to be as old as the Church itself.  After Christ was killed, His followers became targets.  The first persecutors mockingly called them “Christ-ians,” meaning partisans of Christ. They were then and are now, hunted relentlessly.  Only today, the pursuers have technology.  Each day, that technology for identifying Christians and tracking them down gets better and better.  Meanwhile, anti-Christian hatred has grown strong and once again has spread to country after country.  It now engulfs most of the planet.  It is a violent and bloody global struggle.

In several countries on the African continent, like Nigeria and Sudan, churches are bombed during worship, timed to catch and destroy Christ-worshippers where they congregate.  Often, hospitals are bombed hours later, to kill not only the survivors, but their families and friends.  In Asia and the Middle East, constant raids are made on the homes of Christians who use their own houses as secret meeting places.  Their Bibles and hymnbooks (if they have any) are confiscated and burned.  They are beaten on the spot with fists, feet, pipes or whatever is handy.  Then they are hauled off to jail for “questioning,” which apparently means “torture” in many of the world’s languages.

What are they questioned about?  Certainly not their beliefs.  The authorities want to know who their friends and relatives are, where they live, which ones are Christians, who the leaders are, who hides, shelters and supports them?  Forced confession to crimes is standard, establishing lengthy and fabricated criminal records, which come in handy in the public trials before kangaroo courts—if there is a trial.  Sentencing is a foregone conclusion and is always severe—years in a labor camp or some real hell-hole of a prison; increasingly, it’s execution.  Families are not told what has happened to loved ones and seldom find out.

To risk contact with one of these prisoners is to risk sharing their fate.  At a minimum, it would bring you under surveillance and threat.  Your job might disappear.  Your mortgage might suddenly come due.  Your child might be kidnapped.  Your neighbors might shun you after a visit from the police.  Even if they don’t, you can never turn to them for help or comfort, for fear of getting them in trouble or because you don’t know how much pressure they may be under, to accuse you.

Countless Christian women are widowed by the imprisonment and murder of their husbands.  Christian children are abandoned as their parents are dragged away in the middle of the night.  The property of whole families is seized and sold off, with the proceeds going to the state.

“Blasphemy” laws are enacted by theocratic regimes in nations like Iran, making it a capital offense to question the belief system favored by the ruling class, to mention the name of its god or, to encourage or express faith in Jesus Christ.  These laws provide the means for ordinary people in these countries to settle scores, to extort the silence of Christians when crimes like theft, rape and assault are committed against them or simply to get rid of any believer who has become inconvenient.

Every day, the news is filled with reports of trumped-up charges, physical attacks and barbarous atrocities against Christians, male and female, young and old.  The perpetrators go free.  The non-Christian public has become numb and apathetic, accepting such crimes against this particular group, as routine.  For Christians, as well as Jews, it is not 2021.  It is 1939.

But, in the words of novelist Erich Remarque, all is quiet on the Western Front.  Remarque’s tale of trench warfare in WWI was actually titled, Im Westen Nichts Neues or Nothing New in the West.  All Quiet on the Western Front was the translator’s sense of how the author’s thought might best be expressed in English.  The book takes its title from a German situation report at the story’s end, which stands in stark and ironic contrast to the awful reality of the combat soldiers’ experience in that conflict.   Brothers-in-arms were fighting and dying every day.  But the view from headquarters reflected no alarm, no discomfort with this.  For the high command, the front was all quiet.  Nothing new.

I cannot not help wondering, as I scribble this message for you in the free world, the Western world, what might happen if a persecuted Christian from the Third World, a P.O.W., if you will, managed to escape, to tunnel under the wall one dark night and make for our side of the battle line. What would be his experience?

The first shock would be that there are no checkpoints, no secret police, no jeeps full of soldiers with automatic weapons, no fanatical militias, no angry mobs in pursuit.  Where is the blackout?  The curfew? As he groped his way toward your lights, he would stay in the shadows and close to cover.  As he crept toward your sanctuary, his eyes would widen in amazement that you did not seem to be hiding the purpose of this building.  And he would be astonished to see a cross that was not in a museum.

As he pressed his grimy face to your window, he would be surprised that the glass is still intact, the walls not scorched or pockmarked with bullet holes.  His eyes would stare in open-mouthed disbelief, as he peered in at rows of priceless Bibles, stacks of precious hymnbooks and racks of Christian literature, right out in the open, just lying there for all to see.

He would gape in wonder at the size of the space, thinking that it might fit a standing room crowd of hundreds.  Tears might come to his eyes, as they fell upon an organ or piano and a place for a choir of voices.  He would lose himself for a moment, as he dreamt of singing in that choir, imagining himself joyously worshipping God with brothers and sisters in Christ.

Then, our visitor from the underground church would cry, as memories of loved ones who had lost their lives for Jesus or were still suffering terribly for Him, flooded his mind.  He would pray for strength and find a good spot in which to stay concealed for awhile.  Soon, he would have to risk contact with the believers in this place.  His brain would whirl with questions, as he drifted off to sleep, only to awaken with a start, as your church services began.

Had he lost his mind at last, he would wonder?  Was he still dreaming?  Were people really being welcomed to worship Jesus, right out here on the street?  Irresistible curiosity would force him to emerge from the shadows and slip in, through a side door.  Then, the heartbreak would snap him in two, like a dry twig.

The town had seemed so large and free.  Why were there so many empty seats?  Why didn’t the singing raise the roof?  Where was the joy and excitement at being in the presence of the Savior?  And what was this?  The message contained little if any mention of his comrades in captivity, of those condemned to die for daring to share the love of Christ, of those martyrs of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

So many here, far away from battle, seemed completely unaware of the war that was swallowing up the whole earth.  Incredible as it was, here life appeared to be going on as it always had.  There were readings and music, sermons and prayers, announcements and refreshments. The atmosphere was so fantastic—dream-like…trance-like…surreal.  As if all were well, as if there really was “peace in our time.”  How could he describe to you, what conditions are like at the front?  Should he try?  Would you even believe him?

Perhaps not, he would think.  The needs in the trenches are so great, the urgency for support so desperate, that he would feel like screaming, “For the love of God, help us!”  Yet, he would suddenly feel the crushing weight of despair over the enormity of the task of making free-world Christians understand.  It would seem so impossible, so utterly hopeless.  For that matter, how would he make his fellow P.O.W.s for Christ, understand what he had found here?  That it is truly, stupefyingly, all quiet on the Western front?

He would shake his head sadly and pray for wisdom and courage. In a few moments, the answer would come: he had better start back, before he was missed and his loved ones faced reprisals for his sake.  As he stumbles out, he tries to remember how it had all started in his own nation, before the first shots were fired.  It would be different with the Americans, as it had been with the Europeans.

In these developed, progressive societies, a now-familiar pattern would emerge: Christians would be first marginalized, then demonized and finally, criminalized.  As the anti-Christ spirit spread, those infected with it would grow bolder.

Christians would come under orchestrated attack in the media, with wave after wave of propaganda depicting them as hypocrites, corrupt and greedy frauds, sex fiends, bigots, simpletons, fools.  The arts and entertainment industries would be brought to bear, to churn out anti-Christian themes in television, films, music, books, magazines and social networks.  The star power of celebrities and sports figures would be used to hold Christians up to constant public ridicule.

Gradually, those in positions of political power and those determined to get it, would begin to suggest that Christians are suspect and possibly, unfit to govern, because of divided loyalties to God and the state.  Demagogues would sow fear and prejudice, warning that the Christian belief that their Jesus was coming back again to judge the world and punish the wicked might even be dangerous.  What if these ‘born again’ believers tried to hurry that justice along?   How could you trust a group that seemed disdainful of popular culture and rejected the lifestyles of many fellow citizens? Could these “fundamentalists” be potential terrorists?

Anti-Christian groups would launch websites and blogs assassinating the character of prominent Christians.  They would form organizations, alliances and trade groups to drag Christians and anyone who supports them into court.  A barrage of lawsuits would dog them everywhere they went. Even the unsuccessful suits would drain their assets and lower their resistance to oppression.

The free speech rights of Christians would be eroded and infringed; their symbols forcibly removed from view.  There would be persistent efforts to banish Christian belief and practice from the public square.  Their right to hold leadership positions in public life would first be questioned, then challenged, then curtailed.  In time, it would be prohibited—not always by legislatures and courts, but by the overzealous or envious and by the soft bigotry of those who knew nothing of Christianity and few, if any, Christians.

Many Christians would be intimidated and cowed into silence. New employment regulations would threaten penalties for sharing their faith or for refusing to strip off clothing and jewelry that paid homage to Christ.  Christian children would be prevented by law from praying in public schools, funded by their parents’ taxes. They would be forbidden to credit, thank or even mention their God at assemblies and commencement ceremonies, even if held off campus.  Yet, their parents will not be permitted to exempt their kids from mandatory indoctrination that directly affronts their personal beliefs and the morality of their own families.

Not long after that, the American government would begin to compel Christians to act against their consciences, while increasingly restricting their freedom to follow them.  When venomous attacks are made on Christian heritage, traditions, practices and norms, this same government would piously proclaim the virtues of “tolerance” and the need to protect the sensibilities of non-Christians, at all cost.

In this way, Christians would come under involuntary quarantine, as if Christianity were a virulent and contagious disease, which for too long had infected society; a society whose citizenry must be now be inoculated for its health and welfare.  When sporadic violence breaks out against this officially suspect group, the authorities will simply look the other way.

They will merely be reflecting the popular sentiment or at least, the attitudes of those who reward them for defending the established social order. The wind will have changed.  A leveling of the playing field against the dominance of Christianity will seem past due.  It will feel good to throw off its constraints.  It will feel cool and sophisticated and somehow, intellectual. It will seem high time that certain individuals get a little payback, now that their prominence in the culture has faded.

But none of this can ever happen here.  The American Churches are not in the dark, not asleep that THAT day should overtake them like a thief.  American Christians aren’t blind, after all and they would never put up with it.  If Christians in America were to see ANY of these signs, they would sound the alarm and be the first to volunteer for duty.  They would pray earnestly, give until it hurt, redouble their efforts to share the love of God and the good news of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, in His birth, His death on the cross for our sin, His burial and His glorious resurrection.

We know that appeasement doesn’t work—apologizing and placating and ‘going along to get along.’ We’re smarter than that.  We would never sit silent when Jesus’ Name is trashed.  We would never call good ‘evil’ and evil ‘good,’ just to be accepted or politically correct. Thank God, we would never water down the gospel, compromise Biblical truth, sell out or ignore our fellow believers.  We would never break faith with our brothers and sisters who today risk everything to proclaim that Jesus is the one and only Son of God and the one and only way to save us!

NO.  If we ever saw ANY of these signposts on the road to perdition, there would be no “business as usual” for us!  We would jump right in with both feet and “contend earnestly for the faith!”  It cannot and it shall not happen here.  We love our country and our countrymen too much to allow wickedness to go unchallenged, unanswered, unopposed.  We recognize full well the ABSOLUTE DISASTER that would befall this world if Christianity were to be bound and gagged in America.

Fortunately, there is no danger of that.  In the West there is nothing new.  All is truly quiet on the Western front…isn’t it?  Pardon my saying so, but you look a bit unsure,  a bit pale.  Is it the light in here, perhaps?  Are you feeling alright?