"We Must Be Willing to Die For Words"

And yet, the most common persecutor of the church is not a mob but the state. And that puts a whole different spin on Mohler's words.

by Rod D. Martin
May 20, 2012

Speaking at this year's Together for the Gospel (T4G), Al Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, challenged his audience, saying, "we must be willing to die for words."

Well said. Very well said.

And yet.

The most common persecutor of the church is not a mob but the state. And the state rarely prohibits the Gospel outright, but rather tries to shape it to its own service.

Three obvious areas in which this is true in North America:

1. The issue of same-sex marriage, which is not about civil rights but rather about intolerance of and bigotry against religion (and note: when even a comparative handful of churches preached on this in 2003, Americans reversed from 2-1 for to 2-1 against in just six months: pulpits are powerful when they are not asleep).

2. The ongoing issue of life, increasingly attacked by the left at both ends and in between.  And,

3. The so-called "contraception mandate", which is no such thing, but rather a legal Trojan Hor…