Of all of the multitude of false doctrines that have arisen since the resurrection, one of the most bizarre is the prosperity gospel.  Though it has found a home in the hearts of Mammon-worshipers throughout our country and indeed across the world, the gospel of health and wealth bears little resemblance to the gospel of Christ.  Indeed, rather than promising disciples of Jesus prosperity and earthly happiness, the Scriptures promise them the opposite.

One such promise appears in 1 Peter 4:12-13.  There, Peter warns his readers that a fiery ordeal is coming upon them to test them, so that they can share in the sufferings of Christ.  Contextually, this particular fiery ordeal is persecution.  Hostility toward their faith was a major problem for Christians in the first century, and it may prove to be similarly significant for brethren in the near future.

Whether this happens or not, though, some fiery ordeal in a larger sense is in store for all of us.  Christ suffered because He lived in a fallen world irremediably marred by sin, and because we live in the same world, we can expect a similar experience somewhere along the way.  God offers us compassion and healing in our trials, but He never tells us that He is going to make our lives as comfortable as possible, and we need to pay attention both to what He has promised and to what He hasn’t.

Sometimes the fiery ordeal will be persecution.  At others, it will be the death of a loved one, the failure of a cherished business, betrayal by a spouse, or hatefulness from brethren.  The list of possibilities here is as endless as the variations in human misery.

When this trial comes, it will shake us to our core.  It will force us to re-evaluate everything we had believed was true.  Depending on how we react to it, it can lift us to heights of awe-inspiring nobility or plunge us to depths of shame and spiritual failure. 

Peter tells us in 1 Peter 4:16 that when we suffer, we must suffer as a Christian.  This refers in part to suffering because we are Christians, as opposed to suffering because we are evildoers.  However, I believe that it also means that we ought to suffer in a way befitting Christians instead of one befitting evildoers.

In particular, Peter says that we ought to glorify God in our suffering.  There are few better examples of this than Job.  Job famously says in Job 1:21, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”  In this, his determination to glorify God is obvious.

Less obviously, the same is true through the rest of the book.  Job’s words often make us uncomfortable as he accuses God of being unfair, expresses his anger with Him, and demands an explanation.  However, Job never curses God, turns away from Him, or sins with his lips.  Indeed, in Job 42:7, God commends Job for having spoken rightly about Him.  Even in his anger and his anguish, Job did not cease to honor God.

In our suffering, we can be honest with God.  He’s big enough to take it, and He knows what we’re thinking anyway!  What we must not do, though, is reject Him because of our suffering.  When we struggle in our faith but keep struggling onward, the ultimate result will be that God will be glorified, and that we will be glorified along with Him. 

In Acts 13-14, we see the beginning of what will become a dreary pattern for the missionary journeys of Paul.  It goes like this:  Paul comes to a new city and preaches the gospel in the local synagogue.  Some Jews believe, but so do many God-fearing Gentiles.  At this, the unbelieving Jews become enraged, seek to harm Paul and his companions in some way, and drive him on to the next city, where the cycle repeats itself.

This pattern is familiar to any student of the book of Acts, but often we don’t spend much time considering why it occurred.  To us, the persecutors are faceless Bad Guys.  They are two-dimensional obstacles to the spread of the gospel, not really much different than the Mediterranean tempest of Acts 27 or the viper that bites Paul in the next chapter. 

In reality, of course, these unbelievers are not like storms or snakes.  They were real people who lived 2000 years ago, with lives and jobs and families.  On their own terms, they even were good people.  Even though they lived in an ungodly society, they did their best to live according to the Law of Moses and the traditions of their fathers.  They paid to build and maintain their synagogues, and they worshiped there every Sabbath.  It’s quite likely, in fact, that at least some of these people had a good reputation in their communities:  honest, hardworking, devout, and generous to the poor.

And yet, when confronted with the gospel, not only do these good, godly people fail the greatest spiritual test of their lives.  They fail it spectacularly.  They are overcome by jealousy and rage.  They respond to the gospel with insult and slander.  They try to incite the local authorities against Paul and his companions.  They follow them to other cities to oppose them there.  They engage in conspiracy and even, in Acts 14:19, in attempted murder.

What in the world???

Whenever we see someone behaving in such an extremely hateful way, they are pretty much waving a flag over their heads that says, “I Feel Threatened”.  In this case, Paul made the Jews feel threatened by undermining their perception of their relationship with God.  They thought they were pleasing to Him; Paul showed that they were sinners in need of the grace of Jesus.  They thought that only the Jews were God’s chosen people, but Paul invited the Gentiles into their exclusive club. 

I believe that in the future, God’s people increasingly will experience the same thing.  As our society becomes increasingly godless, we will see more persecution, not because the gospel has become relevant, but because it remains so relevant that it is threatening.  Like the Jews of 2000 years ago, these people will attack us because the truth we bear poses an intolerable affront to their self-image.  We should not be surprised by this fiery trial, but neither should we allow it to discourage us.  It is when the darkness is greatest that the light has its most profound effect.

In Acts 13:27, Paul makes a fascinating claim about the Jews of Jerusalem and their rulers.  He notes that even though they did not identify Jesus as the Messiah or recognize Him in the prophecies of the Old Testament, they fulfilled those prophecies in their bad treatment of Him.

This is demonstrably true, and it is vital to our conviction that Jesus is the Son of God.  Fulfilled prophecy, after all, is one of the foremost proofs of the inspiration of Scripture.  If the Bible predicts something that happened hundreds of years after the prediction, it reveals the intervention of a God who knows the end from the beginning. 

These fulfilled prophecies are particularly relevant when they concern Jesus.  The Old Testament contains many prophecies about the Messiah.  When we see these predictions take place in Jesus’ life, they prove that He is who He claimed to be.

However, there is a way for wannabe Messiahs to “game the system”.  It’s theoretically possible for a man to deliberately seek to fulfill all the prophecies himself.  That doesn’t prove that he’s the Messiah, only that he read the prophecies!

In Jesus’ case, though, this is impossible.  There are things that Jesus chose to do to fulfill prophecy—riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, for instance.  However, many of these prophecies aren’t about Jesus’ actions.  They’re about the actions of His hate-filled enemies, men who would have done anything to deny He was the Messiah but unwittingly confirmed His Messiahship through their own choices.  Here is a list of only some of the prophecies about Jesus that His enemies fulfilled:

• They conspired against Him (Psalm 2:1-2, Acts 2:27-28).
• They valued Him at 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12-13, Matthew 26:14-16).
• They used a trusted friend to betray Him (Psalm 41:9, John 13:21-30).
• They scattered His followers (Zechariah 13:7, Matthew 26:56).
• They condemned Him unjustly (Isaiah 53:8, Luke 23:22-25).
• They scourged Him (Isaiah 53:5, Matthew 27:26).
• They gave Him gall and vinegar to drink (Psalm 69:21, Matthew 27:34).
• They pierced His hands and feet (Psalm 22:16, Mark 15:25).
• They cast lots for His clothes (Psalm 22:18, Matthew 27:35).
• They made Him a public spectacle (Psalm 22:17, Matthew 27:39-40)
• They taunted Him with God’s failure to save (Psalm 22:7-8, Matthew 27:41-43).
• They killed Him (Isaiah 53:12, Matthew 27:50)
• They allowed Him to be buried with the rich (Isaiah 53:9, Matthew 27:57-60).

These prophecies are numerous and specific.  Together, the evidence that they offer is overwhelming.  When we consider the way that even Jesus’ enemies worked to prove who He was, we can only say along with the centurion who attended His crucifixion, “Truly, this was the Son of God!”

Acts 11:1-18 contains one of the most remarkable examples of good behavior in the entire Bible.  Peter returns to Jerusalem to Caesarea, fresh from the triumph of baptizing the household of Cornelius, the first Gentile converts to Christ. 

However, this poses an ideological problem for Christians whom Luke describes as being “of the circumcision”.  These are brethren who believe that in order to follow Christ, you have to follow Moses too.  That required observant Jews to maintain the bewildering tangle of dietary laws from Leviticus, laws that no one but Jews followed. 

Thus, to eat with a Gentile was to violate the Law, and in observing that Peter ate with the household of Cornelius, this is precisely the accusation that the Christians who are of the circumcision are making.  They don’t condemn him right out, but it’s fair to imagine their feet tapping impatiently as they wait for an explanation.

Of course, an explanation is precisely what Peter is delighted to give.  He has associated with Gentiles only because the Holy Spirit has shown him a vision, a vision that simultaneously identifies Greeks as fit prospects for the gospel and declares all foods clean.  The baptism of the Holy Spirit, poured out upon those in Cornelius’s household, confirms that this dramatic change is the will of God.

Here is where we come to the remarkable thing.  The party of the circumcision causes plenty of trouble later, pressuring Peter into hypocrisy and provoking Paul to write the epistle to the Galatians, among other problems.  In Acts 11, however, they make the godly choice.  In the face of evidence that Peter had done righteously, they walk back their implied accusation and acknowledge that God has opened the door of salvation to the Gentiles too.

This is hard.  Indeed, this is very hard.  At one point or another, all of us have found ourselves in a place where we have jumped to the wrong conclusion.  Maybe, like the party of the circumcision, we stated the facts and then raised an accusatory eyebrow.  Maybe we went so far as to say the ugly part out loud, to accuse another of wrongdoing on the basis of inadequate information.

When we find out the truth in such cases, the temptation is to double down on the error.  We will stick to our guns on the mistaken assessment of the situation, the mistaken interpretation of Scripture.  We will manufacture additional arguments, additional claims, attempting to shift some or all of the blame for our mistake to the other.  If we do so with sufficient volume, these efforts may even persuade bystanders and silence any opposition.

However, they will not change the truth, and they will not please God.  He desires truth in the inmost parts, and choosing to continue in error is knowingly insisting on a falsehood.  Though it is painful to our pride, the righteous choice is to retreat, to acknowledge that we assumed too much.  Only this kind of honesty and self-honesty will produce the peaceful fruit of righteousness. 

The Bible is full of stories of amazing occurrences, but sometimes, the narratives about very ordinary men and women are what attract our eyes.  For me, one such is the tale of Ananias the Damascene disciple in Acts 9:10-17.  Everything we know about this man comes from the book of Acts.  Indeed, it all comes from the various accounts of the conversion of Saul.  We’re introduced to him in this story, and after it concludes, we never see him again.

Nonetheless, the Scriptures do reveal some things about him.  He lived in Damascus (duh).  He was a devout, Law-keeping Jewish follower of Jesus.  He had a good reputation.  Apparently, he even possessed the miraculous spiritual gift of healing, so he had encountered an apostle at some point.

Jesus has a plan for Ananias, and He tells him about it.  He needs to seek out a man named Saul of Tarsus and lay hands on him so that he can regain his sight.

This plan does not thrill the soul of Ananias.  He has heard of Saul of Tarsus, as probably every Christian alive had.  Saul was Church Enemy Number One, responsible for the scattering of the Jerusalem church and the imprisonment or death of many innocent believers.  What’s more, Ananias knows that Saul has come to Damascus to dish out more of the same.

The Lord’s response to Ananias’ concerns is noteworthy.  He doesn’t pause to calm the fears of His understandably concerned disciple.  He says, simply, “Go.  This one’s Mine.”  Obedient to the word of the Lord, Ananias goes.  Saul obeys the gospel, and the world will never be the same again.

I am encouraged by Ananias.  I am heartened that he too had qualms about obeying God when it came to evangelism.  I often have had, and continue to have, those same qualms with much less reason! 

In fact, it may well be that Ananias’ conversation with Jesus is included in Acts 9 because we do find it so easy to identify with him.  Afraid of personal work?  Well, here’s your guy!

However, we should not focus so much on Ananias’ reluctance that we overlook Christ’s reply.  God is mindful of our frame, and there is much in His word that reveals His compassion for us.  Despite His compassion, He remains King.  When He says, “Go,” He means, “Go!”  It may well be that He has a plan for us too, and that as with Ananias, there is someone only we can help.

Ananias obeyed God, and when he did, he found that he had nothing to be afraid of.  99.9 percent of the time, when we speak up for the Lord, we will find the same thing.  I don’t have any idea how many people I’ve invited to study the Bible with me, and not all of them were willing, but I can’t think of one who even replied with an unkind word.  Fear of the unknown, especially when it comes to evangelism, is natural and understandable, but when God calls us to do His work, fear needs to take a back seat.