Real Victory
©2014 by George Yazigi
The victory of Christianity was built mainly on the resurrection of Christ and generally on martyrdom! Because the act of resurrection was based on the martyrdom of Christ and his crucifixion.
Without martyrdom, Christianity could have vanished, or simply it would have been like any other stagnating religion with a limited outreach!
The Holy Spirit that worked after the ascension of Christ, changed the face of the earth and protected the Church. This Spirit contributed to spreading the word of God based on the teachings and acts of Christ. And the Christendom was growing in numbers until it became the largest religion by all measures. However, is this growth in numbers the real victory?
The question is, are all current Christians following the Holy Spirit nowadays?
It is not easy to answer this question, because Christianity is the largest Religion in the world, would the growing number of Christians suggest that God is happy with what Christians are doing worldwide?
If we examine the book of Revelation, we find that God had warned the initial Churches and wanted them to come back to Him. So despite the fact that Christianity was flourishing and increasing in numbers, in those days, God wanted to correct the paths of some churches.
If we translate the warnings that were found in [Revelation 2:1, Revelation 3:1] to our days, we can easily understand that our period coincides with the Church of Laodicea, and the warnings were to “Secure gold tried in fire, white raiment, eye salve, be zealous, repent” and the reward would be to “Sit with Christ on His throne and eat with Him”.
Therefore our end times churches should buy from Jesus “Gold refined in fire” in order to become “spiritually rich”, get white clothes to express their obedience to God, be zealous and ardent about Christ, and should repent if they do not abide by Christ’s teaching!
The indicator if a church is following the Holy Spirit, would be simply to use the advice Jesus indicated in [Matthew 7:16].
So follow what Jesus has instructed us to examine every spirit and teaching using their fruits!
Therefore the real victory is not necessarily in the number of Christians we have, but in the number of Christians that are following Jesus and observing the Son of God and acting according to His teaching, thus producing fruits worthy of repentance [Luke 3:8] according to the attributes of true Christian life by following the example of Jesus Christ, thus receiving the fruit (grace) of the Holy Spirit [Galatians 5:22-23]!