This last Beatitude is so contrary to human nature that it is difficult to understand what it is all about unless you see it from God’s viewpoint. As you read this, your attitude will change toward involvement for God, toward persecution and reproach, toward being an oddball—the kind of person who is so different that he stands out in a crowd attracting the hatred, venom, and viciousness of other people. You will want to be that kind of person.
Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets that were before you. Matthew 5:10–12. How can we actually be joyful over the world’s complete rejection of us? How could that make us happy? Why should it?
In this Beatitude, the absolute rejection by the world is an occasion of supreme joy. We need to realize the difference between the Lord’s thinking and ours. People’s thinking is toward an adjustment to environment and to a general acceptance by the rest of the world of themselves, insomuch as they can. The opposite picture in this Beatitude is to be the occasion of great rejoicing.
Modern psychiatry attempts to help you to adjust to your environment and to your nature. Rather than trying to change you, it shows you that you should not be confused because you act like a devil, for you really are one; therefore you should be reconciled to being a devil. That is the whole psychology of psychology. It does not acknowledge God because it has no proof of Him. In fact, it is a misnamed science, for psychology means the science of the soul and yet scientists do not believe there is a soul. So it is a science of something which psychologists do not believe exists. At the present time, many leading doctors have rejected psychoanalysis, because of the fact that two out of three people have benefited from psychoanalysis, while three out of four with the same kind of mental oppression recover without any treatment.
Psychoanalysts say, “Be adjusted to your environment—be adjusted to the world.” They encourage you to become adjusted to your bestial nature, your quirks or your hang-ups, and to learn how to live with it reasonably well. They want you to be able to adjust to the world around you. But the Lord tells of the supreme blessedness of someone who is completely rejected by the world, completely out of step. The Lord wants you in the world but not of it. He does not want you conformed to this world, but transformed away from it.
When you are persecuted, rejected, and the world is against you, you can find it an occasion to turn handsprings and be glad. You say, “That’s insane! How could a person be that happy and thrilled over anybody rejecting him?” It is simple. The Apostle Paul said, …all that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. II Timothy 3:12. “They might suffer persecution?” No, they shall suffer persecution, because the world will persecute that which comes forth of godliness. So when your family does not understand you, and they think you are crazy and put the pressure on you, then you know God loves you and you have begun to walk with Him. When you walk with God you will suffer persecution. Wear it with joy. It is a beautiful garment. It means that God has done something within you that the world, the flesh, and the devil recognize. They recognize what has happened in you, and they start persecuting you because of their bitter hatred of it.
Why does the Lord say, “Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake”? Why should we become so ecstatic because we are being persecuted? A beautiful passage to explain this is John 15:18–25:
If the world hateth you, ye know that it hath hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own: but because ye are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, A servant is not greater than his Lord. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no excuse for their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word may be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause.
If you become a channel for God to flow into the world, the world will hate you. This is not a God-accepting world. There are sections of the world that accept religion, but they do not accept God. Many people who call themselves Christians are religious, but they still do not accept God. The fact remains that people do not want God. The world hates Christ. Whether people are conscious of it or not, Jesus Christ is their favorite name of blasphemy.
Philippians 2:9–11 says, God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. This they will surely do, but now they will hate you when you arrive at the place where you are a channel for God into the world.
If they hate Jesus, they will hate you. If they receive Jesus, they will receive you. If they persecuted Him, they will persecute you. “Rejoice,” Jesus said, “because so persecuted they the prophets and your Master who were before you.” This was the way they treated them, and you will also reach that place of being utterly rejected. It is human to feel forlorn and almost think, “Well, maybe they are right, I am nuts—I am peculiar. Maybe I am taking this too far.” But in the spirit you have quite another witness and you know you have arrived at what is really right when you are ready to rejoice and be exceeding glad because they are persecuting you.
The reason they hate you is because God is coming through, and they hate God. The Lord Jesus is coming through, and they hate Him. As soon as you become a pure channel whom God is coming through they will hate you for it. Anyone who lives godly will be persecuted and misunderstood. It should not be an occasion for you to be beaten down; turn a handspring or two—do a backflip. Rejoice. Don’t worry, you are on the right track. You are walking the path God says you are to walk. When you are doing this you receive a great reward; yours is the Kingdom of heaven: GREAT is your reward in heaven. That is why you should be exceedingly glad.
“Oh, I’ve been misunderstood for so long!” You do not know how much you have been laying up on the other side just through that. You do not know how many merits you have won already, just by being persecuted and misunderstood.
One woman started walking with God, and all her friends and family, except one, turned against her. They misunderstood what had happened to “Mama” and thought she was crazy. She was doing what God told her to do, but while she was doing it she had that awful feeling, “Everyone is rejecting me,” and they were. Was that good? Yes, she should be very happy. “Well,” you say, “she was putting herself in a position where she could never reach them.” That is not true at all. People will swear at you one day and swear by you the next. It does not matter, because the day they need God they will wonder, “Now who was that channel whom God was pouring through? Let’s see, I’ve got to remember! Who was that person I was throwing rocks at because the Lord was coming through them so beautifully?” When they remember, they will come and say, “Listen, I’m in trouble. Will you pray for me; will you help me?” They did that with the three Hebrew children (Daniel 3), and they did it with Daniel (Daniel 6).
Whenever you have been completely rejected, say, “Hallelujah, I have just now resigned from the personality cult. No longer will I try to win friends, influence people, and bring converts to Jesus by my wonderful human charm. Now I have been rejected. There is no other way I could do it but by the Holy Spirit; I’m down to that now. I’ll win them by the Holy Spirit and just be a plain old channel for God.” When the early Church was being persecuted, it won converts more rapidly over that whole new world than at any time since.
When persecutions come, people go to a few godly souls who are worthy of persecution for prayer and answers. We do not know how much we are chalking up for ourselves when we become channels of God and are being persecuted and evil is being spoken of us. The Lord lays up great reward for us. Days of persecution sometimes even cause the brethren to turn away. “When men reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for My sake, just rejoice and be exceeding glad.” To the measure you are willing to suffer persecution, to that extent the Lord will commit His authority to you. II Timothy 2:10 says that if we suffer with Him we will also reign with Him.
If you have not reached that place of dedication to Him where you are willing to suffer for Him and suffer persecution, then you are not in a place where the Lord will commit much authority to you. Paul said, I reckon that the sufferings at this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to usward. Romans 8:18. That is the way it works. Do not be afraid to suffer.
There are two signs of sonship. One, Romans 8:14, For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. Two, Romans 8:17, …heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him. When we are heirs, we are brought into full sonship. You may think, “I would rather be led than suffer.” If you are led by the Spirit, then you will suffer. I wouldn’t be adjusted to this world for anything that could be given me, because I would lose all my stock in the Kingdom. This phrase, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is in the first Beatitude: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. It is repeated again in the last Beatitude: Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
God simply turns the Kingdom over to them. The people who are willing to suffer are those He entrusts to rule and to reign with Him. They are the ones He moves into His own destiny, and He makes it a codestiny for all of those who suffer with Him. “If you suffer with Me, you will reign with Me.” If you are not willing to talk up for the Lord and be persecuted, you are not ready for it. But when you finally love the Lord, until nothing is more blessed than being dedicated, consecrated, and so given over to the Lord that you no longer care what people think, then they come up with the big lie. Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. You are blessed when the big lie comes against you. The big lie comes from Satan who is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). Woe unto them when they begin to bring that big lie to distort and pervert what God is doing in the earth and to harass His people. Satan is always trying to smear the saints, to make their good evil spoken of, while the rogues and villains who are the greatest curse and plague to the world are presented in some endearing manner.
Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil. Isaiah 5:20. That is what they are doing in the earth today. You cannot get an honest picture of a man. If a godly man goes into politics, innuendos and slanders will be made to smear his name. But a crook will be eulogized and praised. The ungodly cannot bear for a man living a godly life and walking in righteousness to come forth without smearing him on television and in the newspapers. They heap to themselves press agents and turn loose the propaganda machines and articles for newspapers for just one reason: to fool all the people for a little while. When someone really begins to walk with the Lord, they turn on the great machine, the steam rollers. “We have to squash him. We have to crush him because he’s walking with God.” When are Christians going to learn, with their vote and everything else, to judge a thing in the spirit and not by what the world says or what it thinks.
Any time they are leveling the big guns at you, there is only one reason: you’ve made it! Rejoice and be exceeding glad! Just be absolutely, hilariously joyful, because you have become such an evident channel of God that their opinion of you is predetermined. They will hate you because they hated Him also. They are enemies of God and they will be your enemies. They will persecute you.
“Oh,” you say, “I have to get out of this if that’s what will happen to me!”
What did Jesus say? “Great is your reward in heaven.” When you go through persecution, the real sense of value comes into play. All kinds of rewards are being laid up in heaven for you because you are tuned to the Lord. You are coming in His name. Godliness and righteousness is not a phony, pious pretense; it is a quality of your spirit. You walk with God and you say to the world, “Accept Jesus, or reject Him.” Here is the word that counts: Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake.
What must you do to be persecuted? Just walk with God. You have really arrived when there is enough of God in you that the world finds it expedient to reject you. “They hate Me,” Jesus said, “and they will hate you also.”
Has your family taken you to task and accused you of being a fanatic? Do you want everyone to think well of you? What does the Bible say about that? Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! Luke 6:26a. What makes everyone speak well of you? When you are going through the period where you have fooled all the people, they are all for you, and the next thing they tear you down. That is the way of the world.
Blessed are you when you can take persecution that comes against you like a flood! Then you know you have arrived at a point of depth in God. You have not only become a channel for God, but your own personal life is spiritually rooted deep enough so you need not say “I don’t know if I’ll make it or not.”
To illustrate this is the parable of the sower and the seed. And he that was sown upon the rocky places, this is he that heareth the word, and straightway with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not root in himself, but endureth for a while; and when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, straightway he stumbleth. Matthew 13:20–22.
God lets persecution come because it is the best way to force you to send your roots deep enough so you will make it. If you refuse, if you are shallow and simply putting on a pretense, when the persecution or tribulation comes you will be offended.
Forget the old day of Hollywood evangelism: “All the best people are doing it.” This is the time for the lame and the halt and the blind to come in (Luke 14:21). It will not be by professional preachers. There is no organization to appoint them to churches and see to it that they have openings and pensions. Those who will go out and sacrifice have nothing to lose that they value. If they have nothing to lose they will do it, but if they love the honor that comes from men more than the honor that comes from God they will not stay. Persecution has to come, and when it comes, if there is no depth or root they will fall away.
When pressures are on you, and you wonder if there is any end to them, stand straight and tall; for they take the set from your spirit and allow you to expand. Those things that have been like locknuts in the whole mechanism of your being, loosen and give way. You begin to expand and change; the Word changes you. Though the winds blow and the waves are contrary, you cannot drift; you hold to the course, and then you realize there is a strength that comes from God to you, a real living strength. Pressures no longer bother you which would normally have swamped and upset you. You are growing tall. When the roots go down and the trials and tribulations cannot shake you, then you are qualified to be among those who bring forth fruit—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundredfold. Blessed are you!
Have the persecutions started? Do people think you are a little strange, that you talk to yourself or something? Good! You are just about there. You are arriving. Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. It belongs to them. God turns the Kingdom over to those who can take the persecution.
We must have a new viewpoint about persecution. Some avoid it by deliberately being diplomatic instead of being led by the Spirit of the Lord. It is more important to be led by the Spirit of the Lord than to be diplomatic. Suppose you are diplomatic and win people over with your cleverness or wisdom. That is a mental, soulish acceptance which will not stand. Only when you bring out the Word can people have a reaction to it. “If they keep My Word, they will keep your word also; If they hated Me, they will hate you also,” Jesus said.
Are you afraid to be identified as a channel of the Lord, to speak out the truth in love? If they reject you because they reject the Word, they reject the Lord. Rejoice that you can suffer with Jesus honestly. If they accept the Word, then they will accept you as a brother, and the tie will be beautiful. We ought to lay down our lives for each other. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13. That is what Jesus did, and that is exactly what He is bringing us to do also.
The persecuted are those who have really made it on this one point: they are the only people who are living for something bigger than themselves and their own human interests. Because they have renounced their own interests, they are willing to be persecuted, reproached, reviled, and falsely accused of all manner of evil for His sake. Because they are living for Him, they are not living for themselves. Therefore, the Lord says, “Great is their reward in heaven,” because that is the way He does it. Jesus said, “He that loses his life for My sake shall find it.” Anyone who is dedicated to live for God and accept the persecution with exceeding great joy, really has it made—great reward, great riches, great blessings, reigning with Him as kings and priests of God. He says it is all yours.
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets that were before you. He is identifying you with the top men He has had down through the centuries. You are walking with Him among the holy company of men described in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews who were sawn asunder, thrown to beasts, beaten to death, stoned and slain with the sword, of whom the world was not worthy. You are walking in a wonderful company. God has not only identified you with Himself, but He has identified you with all His prophets.
Jesus said, “My Word shall judge them in the last day” (John 12:48). We are in that day. The Word today has an amazing power to judge. It creates in you, but if you reject it you seem to wither and die from that hour.
The Lord is coming to be admired in His saints, to be glorified in all those that believe (II Thessalonians 1:10). He is not coming to be spat upon and crucified again. When men come against us in persecutions, it is the occasion of the judgments in the end time that the Bible speaks about. They seem to prevail only for a little time. One of the clearest pictures of that is in the book of Revelation. Two witnesses come forth with such signs and judgments upon the earth that the world is set to kill them. After they are slain they lie in the streets for three and a half days, while national and international holidays are declared, and the people rejoice because these two witnesses who troubled the earth have been slain. Then they are resurrected and caught up.
We are living now in the time of the resurrection. Don’t think that the resurrection is a set time of a split second. The resurrection is Christ. He is the Resurrection and Life. As He is coming forth, you will see strange occurrences taking place during the time of His presence, such as will happen to the two witnesses (I believe they represent entire companies of people). Those who love not their lives unto death will be resurrected almost instantly. Fantastic events will take place such as happened in the early Church but have been rejected as myths. In the early Church, many times those who were slain in martyrdom were resurrected immediately and caught up. Great was the glory upon them. That is what Paul referred to when he said he wanted to attain to the resurrection from the dead—not just the resurrection, but the out-resurrection—meaning he wanted to bypass waiting until the end of the age to come into resurrection (Philippians 3:11). Many of the early saints entered into the resurrection.
Explorations in the catacombs of the early Christians revealed a burying room with a large portrayal of the funeral services of the early Christians painted on the walls. It showed the feastings, the great joy, and the revelry. They gave the Christian a beautiful send-off, all they could bring to eat and plenty of wine. You say, “That sounds terrible!” It is Christian. Would you want to hire mourners as the pagan do? It is sometimes pitiful when a man dies and there is no one to be sorry and mourn him. Knowing that, many a man saves up his money, for when he dies he wants a funeral in which there will be someone to mourn for him, even if it is pretense.
Not so for me. When I make that grand entrance and you hear that war whoop because I’m on the other side, don’t mourn for me. Do what Christians ought to do. Refuse to have a service in a mortuary. Have it in the house of God where you worshiped. Let the saints gather around and have some songs. Let them sing. Let them be joyful in the Lord, for we sorrow not as others which have no hope (I Thessalonians 4:13). Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Psalms 116:15. We come to rejoice with the Lord in the treasure He has in inheriting another son of light. That is the way we ought to view persecution.
How great is the desire for approval! Young people do not want to be different. Some of us remember high school and what it was like to go to gym class and refuse to take ballroom dancing. We had to sit in the bleachers and watch the others, because we were the freaks. Also we would be given assignments of movies which some of the churches restricted in those days. We were always getting the backwash—teachers speaking against us; students speaking against us; coming up against opposition in towns where we would go to preach and minister—always facing something. No matter what happened I always seemed to be on the backlash of something. I was called everything, and it was a great trial to me. I didn’t take persecution very graciously, but I was quick to tell people I was sorry when I was helping them back up again. Then the Lord began to deal with my heart, and I tried to carry well what it meant to be a Christian. However, I had the attitude that Christians can get of feeling like a second-rate citizen. Were you ever like that in school? You tried to serve God, so you tried to be invisible when you were walking down the hall. You were a Christian, and so you were nothing. They were sinners, so they were everything.
It is surprising how many Christians think that way. The day you give an honest, simple witness of the Lord in the Holy Spirit, and it causes someone to revile and reproach and say something derogatory to you, yet you stand there rejoicing, you have arrived. You have come to the place where God wants you to be. You are a channel for God, and the impact of God through your life is something they absolutely cannot accept; so they reject you and the witness totally. The word for martyr in the Greek is the word for witness. Blessed are you who have been persecuted, for great is your reward in heaven.
What do you think you are worth? The early Christians didn’t mind the spoiling of their goods. They took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing that they had a more enduring substance in heaven (Hebrews 10:34). Cold, naked Christians—houses gone, clothes gone, money and food gone—everything was taken away from them, yet they were standing rejoicing as though they possessed all things. and they did. God was chalking it up for them, faster than man could take it away from them, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal, Matthew 6:20.
“Well, I’ve got my position to think about! I can’t put my job in jeopardy: after all, I have some influence! I don’t want to lose out with my friends. I just can’t stand still; I’m going to sue them for libel, that’s what I’m going to do! Imagine saying all those evil things against me falsely!” You are not the first Christian to react that way when your good is spoken evil of. You will be sorry if you act that carnally when God gets some real persecution going for you and you don’t appreciate it—if you threaten to sue them when God is ready to pour out His blessing. You must learn not to fight your own battles; it is God who fights them. You do not have to justify yourself; God justifies you. When that happens to you, God is pinning merit badges on you without your knowing it. He is giving you the mark of divine approval and saying, “They hated Me without a cause; now sit beside Me and let them hate you without a cause.”
Paul glorified God that he was counted worthy to be a partaker of the sufferings of Christ. Who cares what people say? It is an occasion of joy when they look upon you as a channel of God. Even God’s people will sometimes persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for His name’s sake when they walk on a carnal level. Rejoice! That is the way they treated the prophets. God puts you in the category of the prophets. Would you like to be put in that category?
The greatest thing God can do for you is to identify you as His by letting His reproach rest upon you. Don’t be sad about it, rejoice! It is essential.