This sermon emphasizes the inevitability of persecution for believers, highlighting the need for spiritual alertness and readiness for the tribulation. It underscores the reality of being strangers in this world and the ongoing spiritual warfare between God and Satan. The message warns of a time when being a Christian will be a punishable offense, leading to martyrdom, as society becomes increasingly godless and intolerant of Christian values.

The Word of God reads, beginning in verse 9, But be on your guard, for they will deliver you to the courts, and you will be flogged in the synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings. For my sake, as a testimony to them, the gospel must first be preached to all the nations. When they arrest you and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but it is the Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but the one who endures to the end, he will be saved. And as we look at this today, it should serve as a reminder to all of us that in reality, this world is not our home. We are simply aliens and strangers here, and that we are involved in a great invisible warfare. There is spiritual warfare taking place all around us, between God and between Satan, between light and darkness, between the truth and between error. And it will all come to a cataclysmic conclusion in the time of the tribulation. We must not be preoccupied with the things of this world. We must be setting our mind continually upon the Lord in heaven and not upon the things of this earth. If we are living for the things of this world, we will not be prepared and we will not be ready at the time of the fulfillment of these things. And so he begins with this call for the alertness of the believers. We need to have our spiritual eyes open. At the time of this fulfillment, believers will be delivered up to the government officials and will be publicly flogged and beaten and whipped, and many of them unto martyrdom and unto death. No wonder, he says, be on your guard to be ready so that your confidence is strong in the Lord when such a time of tribulation would come upon the scene. He says, for they will deliver you to the courts. The very same word is used in verse 11 when he says they will hand you over. What we obviously draw from this is that it will become a crime, a capital crime, to be a Christian. And it will become a crime worthy of death to hold to Christian values in a godless society. And religious freedoms will be removed as it relates to Christianity. Mark it down. There is no other implication to draw from this. To be a Christian and to stand for Christian values in the last day will be a punishable offense in the courts that will lead even to death. And do we not see before our very eyes the changing of a culture and the changing of a society before our very eyes? It would not take very much more altercation in the times in which we live than to see these verses fulfilled in the immediate future. The one thing that will not be tolerated in the last days is to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this should sober up every one of us here today that I need to set down deep roots in the Lord Jesus Christ before these hard times come if I should be living in that last generation. The real issue that the world has with us is Christ. The real hatred is towards Christ. And we who bear the name of Christ, and we who preach Christ, and we who preach the exclusivity of salvation in Christ alone, and we who preach the Ten Commandments and the morals that are laid out for the family in the home, we will become public enemy number one in the world and the reason will be ultimately because of Christ. Because Christ is the stumbling block. Christ is the rock of offense that causes the world to be offended. And because we simply speak His message, they will come and arrest us.