Stand up and Speak up

DEVOTION

THE REVELATION

STAND UP AND SPEAK UP

Rev 11:11-14

11 But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. 12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, "Come up here." And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on. 13 At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. 14 The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon.

NIV

And so these two witnesses experienced what the original man experienced, the breath of God in their nostrils and life was in them. But if these two are as we have thought to be all of us, the believers who have a witness for Jesus, were silenced by the great power of the city, the government, the activists against Christianity, then there will also be a time when we will be even more of a witness. It is doubtful, but possible that this is not symbolism and these two are actually Elijah and Moses. It is possible that were actually killed and came back to life. But when we consider the whole world rejoiced over them being killed, it does not match up as we already determined. But if this applies to our witness for Jesus and the world will eventually win, being able to silence our voice in the public square, their rejoicing will only last a short time. It is as with most things of the human heart, thinking themselves more powerful then God. This type of thinking is demonstrated in the environmental movement. If man thinks he can actually either destroy or save the environment he is thinking he has more power then God who created it all with the complete foreknowledge of everything man would ever be and thus supposedly do to harm that which God created to sustain our lives. Man can neither harm nor save that which God created, except ourselves. We can cause great harm to our own being by refusing to accept the truth of God. The world might think they have won the battle against our witness for Jesus. They have already started removing God, removing our witness for him from the public square. We have already witnessed one state Supreme Court ruling the Ten Commandment monument on the capital grounds is unconstitutional and must be removed. It is for certain those who oppose God are rejoicing. This is just the beginning of more of the same to come and it will not be long before we are told we cannot talk about Jesus in the public square at all. It will be alright to attend church, but we must keep our faith silent outside the church. Yet a time will come, when all their efforts will fail, and we will once again be not just a voice, but a powerful voice for God. Our rebirth of spreading the gospel message will cause a great earthquake, a great shaking in the world of the unsaved. A revolution of sorts. They will be in chaos, not knowing how to silence us. They will be in turmoil over the renewed power of Christianity and it is certain they will have to confess it is by the power of God we have such a strong revival of our witness. All this might not happen completely in our lifetime, but it will happen. We are seeing many efforts now at work trying to silence us. Maybe we will be silenced, but for now we still have our voice. We still can express our faith in the open. Doing so might cause us some consternation, we might be persecuted in some sense, but we still can speak up for Jesus. We need to keep our voice for as long as we can. The world of the unsaved will not prevail against our voice for God. He will openly show his power through us believers and the world will have to sit up and take notice. That old saying, If you want to be seen, stand up, if you want to be heard, speak up, and if you want to be appreciated, sit down and shut up, might just apply to how the world views us. But for now and forever we will and we must keep standing up and speaking up for Jesus