10:22
“Everyone will hate you because of me”. Now we do need to appreciate the hyperbole here. Jesus does not mean that literally everyone would hate us, for that would mean we were the only Christian left in the world! But He does mean that there will be times when people from many sectors of society do hate us. We do need to take this seriously. Christians in many part of the world today face very serious persecution from governments and from society in general. In the West countries were roughly based on Christian values, now despise Christian values, especially when it comes to sexual morality. So what are we to do? It is definitely not to along with the flow of society, which sadly is the so-called wisdom of many parts of the church! We are to stand firm to the end. We need to listen to Jesus’ advice.
10:23
Standing firm does not always mean staying in the place where persecution is happening. Sometimes it means fleeing to another place. This is a quite Biblical practice. “You will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes”. This is a difficult phrase, for which no one seems to have a really satisfactory explanation. It is also preceded by “truly I say to you”, so Jesus meant it to be taken seriously. Some take it as referring to the second coming, but that seems a bit of a stretch, others take it as referring to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
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