Persecution for Wickedness Vs. Persecution for Righteousness

by Stuart DiNenno

If and when the Marxist persecution comes to America and other Western nations in the form of brazenly open aggression, rather than being manifested in the “soft genocide” that has been slowly destroying white Christian America for several generations, we will need to recognize the difference between, on the one hand, the persecution against the ungodly and their dead institutional churches for their apostasy, and, on the other hand, the persecution for righteousness’ sake that Jesus Christ spoke of in regard to true Christians. One is God using Satan’s agents against wicked rebels and their apostate churches to their destruction, and the other is God using Satan’s agents for the benefit of true Christians and their faithful churches to strengthen, refine, and even increase them.

Consider the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn about why all the horrors of the Marxist Revolution, and the totalitarian regime that sprang from it, came upon the Russian people:

“Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

Now consider the words of Christ regarding the persecution that comes upon faithful Christians:

“Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

It is quite obvious that the persecution of which Solzhenitsyn spoke is not the same kind of persecution of which Jesus Christ prophesied. In fact, they are complete opposites. The former is persecution unto destruction for wickedly turning away from God and the latter is persecution unto blessing for righteously following God. Of course, the Communists themselves do not recognize the difference between true and false Christianity and they are going to try to suppress and eradicate anything that even smells of Christianity. However, we need to see the hand of God in the malevolent actions of the Marxists and recognize that, despite their apparently indiscriminate behavior toward both the faithful and the unfaithful, what they mean for evil against anything that is even only nominally Christian will be used by God for the good of the true church and thereby empower it, purify it, and ultimately bring it to victory.

We need to learn to discern between the purposes of God toward both parties, lest we witness all the destruction around us and come to mistakenly believe that the hand of God is against genuine Christians. This can never be the case if we are in Christ. God’s chastisement of the church is always corrective and purgative, never condemnatory and injurious. All things that come upon the Christian are in some way for his own good. All things. And on the contrary, all things that come upon the wicked ultimately are for their condemnation.